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Noah an Jonah 

an 
Cap'n John Smith 




BOOKS BY DON MARQUIS 

PREFACES 

HERMIONE 

CARTER 

NOAH AN' JONAH AN' 
CAP'N JOHN SMITH 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 



T247 




Noah an' Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith 



Noah an' Jonah 

AN 

CapnJohn Smith 

A BOOK OF HUMOROUS VERSE 

BY 
DON MARQUIS 

Author of "The Old Soak" "Carter" 
"Hermione" "Prefaces," etc. 




- 1 ***/ 



D. APPLETONAND COMPANY 

NEW YORK : LONDON : MCMXXI 



Copyright, 1021, by 
D. Appleton and Company 




©GI.A627U7 

NOV -3 1321 



v 



Copyright, 19x3, 1914. W5. 1917. 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, by 
The Sun Printing and Publishing Association. 

Printed in the United States of America. 



V 



DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

To the people of the New York Sun — owners, 

editors, reporters, and printers — J dedicate 

these verses. They have a way of 

encouraging me in this sort of 

thing, and they should share 

the responsibility. And to 

the Sun I am indebted 

for the permission 

to reprint. 





CONTENTS 

Page 

Noah an' Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith . i 

Spring Ode 6 

The Hero Cockroach 8 

A Commuter's Garden 12 

April Song 18 

Alphabet of Bible: Birds and Beasts . . 20 

A Fable .27 

Another Villon-ous Variation ... 31 

Proverbs xii, 7 33 

Improbable EpitapJis 34 

The Gods at Coney Island .... 37 

A Seaside Romance 42 

An Ode to the Oyster 45 

A Tragedy of the Deep . . . . 51 
ix 



Contents 



Page 

Pantoum of the Pilfered Pups ... 54 

The Country Barber Shop .... 56 

An Encyclopedia Affair . . . . 60 

The Ghost and the Monument ... 62 

The Toonerville Trolley .... 68 

The Rubber Plant 70 

Sundered 76 

Votes for Women 80 

To a Lost Sweetheart . . . . .84 

The Incendiary Sex 87 

Grotesques 89 

The Determined Suicide .... 92 

The Pseudo-Wit 95 

A Scientific Note 98 

Frustration . 102 

Sad Thoughts 104 

Reverie . . . . . . . . 106 

/ Corinthians vii, 32, 33 . . . .113 

Boob Ballad 115 

Proverbs v, 5 .117 

A Plan 119 

Speaking of Debacles . . . . . 122 

The Good Old Days 125 

The Universe and the Philosopher . . 127 

Taking the Longer Vietv .... 132 

Grief 135 

Yes, Song Is Coming into Its Own Again 137 
x 



Contents 



The Genius of the Vague . 

Vorticism 

Ballade of Goddamned Phrases . 
The Battle of the Blurbs . 
The Jokesmith's Vacation . 
Suggestions for a Movie Fillum . 
Ballad of the Author of Dora Thome 
Strong Stuff 



Page 
140 

142 

144 

I46 
149 

152 
155 
158 




XI 




an 



Noah an 9 Jonah 
Cap*n John Smith 



NOAH an' Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith, 
Mariners, travelers, magazines of myth, 
Settin' up in Heaven, chewin' and 
a-chawin' 
Eatin' their terbaccy, talkin' and a-jawin'; 
Settin' by a crick, spittin' in the worter, 
Talkin* tall an' tactless, as saints hadn't orter, 
Lollin' in the shade, baitin' hooks and anglin', 
Occasionally friendly, occasionally wranglin'. 

Noah took his halo from his old bald head 
An' swatted of a hoppergrass an' knocked it dead, 
An' he baited of his hook, an' he spoke an' said : 
I 



Noah an Jonah 



"When I was the Skipper of the tight leetle Ark 
I useter fish fer porpus, useter fish fer shark, 
Often I have ketched in a single hour on Monday 
Sharks enough to feed the fambly till Sunday — 
To feed all the sarpints, the tigers an' donkeys, 
To feed all the zebras, the insects an' monkeys, 
To feed all the varmints, bears an' gorillars, 
To feed all the camels, cats an' armadillers, 
To give all the pelicans stews for their gizzards, 
To. feed all the owls an' catamounts an' lizards, 
To feed all the humans, their babies an' their 

nusses, 
To feed all the houn' dawgs an' hippopotamusses, 
To feed all the oxens, feed all the asses, 
Feed all the bison an' leetle hoppergrasses — 
Always I ketched, in half a hour on Monday 
All that the fambly could gormandize till Sun- 
day!" 

Jonah took his harp, to strum and to string her, 
An' Cap'n John Smith teched his nose with his 

finger. 
Cap'n John Smith, he hemmed some an' hawed 

some, 
An' he bit off a chaw, an' he chewed some and 

chawed some: — 
"When I was to China, when I was to Guinea, 
When I was to Java, an' also in Verginney, 
2 



Noah an Jonah 



I teached all the natives how to be ambitious, 
I learned 'em my trick of ketchin' devilfishes. 
I've fitten tigers, I've fitten bears, 
I have fitten sarpints an' wolves in their lairs, 
I have fit with wild men an' hippopotamusses, 
But the perilousest varmints is the bloody octo- 

pusses ! 
I'd rub my forehead with phosphorescent light 
An' plunge into the ocean an' seek 'em out at 

night ! 
I ketched 'em in grottoes, I ketched 'em in caves, 
I used f er to strangle 'em underneath the waves ! 
When they seen the bright light blazin' on my 

forehead 
They used ter to rush at me, screamin' something 

horrid ! 
Tentacles wavin', teeth white an' gnashin', 
Hollerin' an' bellerin', wallerin' an' splashin'! 
I useter grab 'em as they rushed from their 

grots, 
Ketch all their legs an' tie 'em into knots !" 

Noah looked at Jonah, an' said not a word, 
But if winks made noises, a wink had been 

heard. 
Jonah took the hook from a mudcat's middle 
An' strummed on the strings of his hallelujah 

fiddle; 

3 



Noah an Jonah 



Jonah give his whiskers a backhand wipe 

An' cut some plug terbaccer an' crammed it in 

his pipe! 
f — (Noah an* Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith, 
Fisherman an' travelers, narreratin' myth, 
Settin' up in Heaven all eternity, 
Fishin' in the shade, contented as could be! 
Spittin' their terbaccer in the little shaded creek, 
Stoppin' of their yarns fer ter hear the ripples 

speak ! 
I hope fer Heaven, when I think of this — 
You folks bound hellward, a lot of fun you'll 

miss !) 

Jonah, he decapitates that mudcat's head, 

An' gets his pipe ter drawin' ; an' this is what he 
said: 

"Excuse me ef your stories don't excite me 
much! 

Excuse me ef I seldom agitate fer such ! 

You think yer fishermen! I won't argue none! 

I won't even tell yer the half o' what I done ! 

You has careers dangerous an' checkered! 

All as I will say is : Go and read my record ! 

You think yer fishermen ! You think yer great ! 

All I asks is this : Has one of ye been 'bait? 

Cap'n Noah, Cap'n John, I heerd when ye hol- 
lered ; 

4 



Noah an Jonah 



What I asks is this: Has one of ye been swal- 

leredf 
It's mighty purty fishin' with little hooks an' 

reels. 
It's mighty easy fishin' with little rods an' creels. 
It's mighty pleasant ketchin' mudcats fer yer 

dinners. 
But this here is my challenge fer saints an' fer 

sinners, 
Which one of ye has v'yaged in a varmint's 

inners ? 
When I seen a big fish, tough as Methooslum, 
I used for to dive into his oozly-goozlum ! 
When I seen the strong fish, wallopin' like a 

lummicks, 
I useter f oiler 'em, dive into their stummicks ! 
I could v'yage an' steer 'em, I could understand 

'em, 
I useter navigate 'em, I useter land 'em ! 
Don't you pester me with any more narration ! 
Go git famous! Git a reputation!" 

— Cap'n John he grinned his hat brim beneath, 
Gicked his tongue of silver on his golden teeth : 
Noah an' Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith, 
Strummin' golden harps, narreratin' myth ! 
Settin' by the shallows forever an' forever, 
Swappin' yarns an' fishin' in a little river ! 

5 



Spring Ode 



FILL me with sassafras, nurse, 
And juniper juice! 
Let me see if I'm still any use ! 
For I want to be young and to sing again, 

Sing again, sing again! 

Middle age is a curse! 
It is Spring again, Spring again, Spring again! 
And the big bull oyster comes out of his cave 

At the flood of the tides 
And bellows his love to his mate where she rides 

On the crest of the wave! 
The crimson pylorus is singing his song 
And the scarlet sciaticas flame in the grass, 
The snail is abroad with his periscope prong — 

Fill me with sassafras ! 

I want to be one 
With the joy of the earth, under the sun, 
For the purple convolvulus convolves and volutes 
And the arbutus ups and arbutes — 

Fill me with sassafras, 
And cohosh and buchu and juniper juice 

And then turn me loose ! 



Spring Ode 



ii 

Out of the prison of Winter 
The earth and its creatures emerge, 
And the woodlouse sits on a splinter 
And flirts with the cosmic urge; 
Steep me in camomile tea, 
Or give me a shot with a needle, 
For I want to be young again — Me! 
And woo with a lyrical wheedle! 
Go page Amaryllis, 
And tell her Spring's here with a heluva moon — 

Oh, Chloe, come hither ! 
Here's a bald-headed Strephon that's willing to 

spoon ! 
He brings to the business a lyre and a zither 
And a heart that's been chewed by the romance 
bacillus — 

Nurse, the juniper juice, 
And the sassafras, nurse, and then turn me loose, 
Let me see if I'm still any use ! 



The Hero Cockroach 

(In the manner of the earlier Kipling) 

THE Cockroach stood by the mickle wood 
in the flush of the astral dawn, 
And he sniffed the air from the hidden 
lair where the Khyber swordfish 
spawn ; 
The bilge and belch of the glutton Welsh as they 

smelted their warlock cheese 
Surged to and fro where the grinding floe 
wrenched at the Headland's knees. 

Half seas over! Under — up again! 

And the barnacles itfhite in the moon! 

The pole star's chasing its tail like a pup again, 

And the dish runs away with the spoon! 

The Waterspout came bellowing out of the red 

horizon's rim, 
And the gray Typhoon and the black Monsoon 

surged forth to the fight with him, 
With threefold might they surged to the fight 

for they hated the great bull Roach; — 
And they cried, "Begod !" as they lashed the sod, 

"And here is an Egg to Poach! 
8 



The Hero Cockroach 



We will bash his mug with his own raw lug new- 
stripped from off his dome, 

For there is no law but tooth and claw to the 
nor' nor'east of Nome! 

The Punjaub Gull shall have his skull ere he 
goes to the burning ghaut, 

For we have no time for aught but crime where 
the jungle lore is taught! 

Across the dark the Afghan Shark is whining 
for his head — 

There shall be no rule but death and drool till 
the deep red maws are fed !" 

Half seas under! Up! and down again! 

And her keel was blown off in a squall! 

Girls, we misdoubt that we'll ever see towrf 

again-—' 
Haul, boys! Hall boys! Haul! 

The Cockroach spat — and he tilted his hat and he 

grinned through the lowering murk, 
The Cockroach felt in his rangoon belt for his 

good bengali dirk, 
He reefed his mast against the blast and he bent 

his mizzen free 
And he flung the cleats of his binnacle sheets in 

the teeth of the yeasty sea ! 

9 



The Hero Cockroach 



He oped his mouth and he sluiced his drouth 

with his last good can of swipes — 
"Begod !" he cried, "they come in pride, but they 

shall go home with the gripes \" 
"Begod," he said, "if they want my head it is 

here on top of my chine — 
It shall never be said that I doffed my head for 

the boast of a heathen line!" 
And he scorned to wait but he dared his fate and 

loosed his bridle rein 
And leapt to close with his red-fanged foes in 

the trough of the howling main ! 

Half seas over! Down again and up! 
And the cobra is wild with her fleas — 
The rajah whines to the pukka's pup, 
And there's dirt in the Narrow Seas! 

From Hell to Nome the blow went home where 

the Cockroach struck his foe, 
From Nome to Hell the mongeese yell as they see 

the black blood flow; 
The hawsers snort from the firing port as the 

conning chains give way 
And the chukkers roar till they rouse the boar 

on the hills of Mandalay ; — 
And the Cockroach said as he tilted his head: 
IO 



The Hero Cockroach 



"Now, luff! you beggars, luff! 
Begod," says he, "it is easy to see ye cannot 

swallow my duff! 
I have tickled ye, I have pickled ye, I have 

scotched your mizzen brace, 
And the charnel shark in the outer dark shall 

strip the nose from your face — 
Begod," says he, "it is easy to see that the Nar- 
row Seas are mine, 
So creep ye home to your lair at Nome and patch 

your guts with twine! 
Begod (says he) it is easy to see who rules this 

bloody bight — 
Come ye again, my merry men, whenever ye 

thirst for fight!" 

Half seas over! Stop! She is queasy! 
The Cockroach has dropped in the stew! 
Honestly, fellows, this stuff is easy! 
The trouble's to tell when you're through. 



A Commuters Garden 

Garter Snake 

HOW wan, on the first of July, 
The gardens of April appear ! 
Now the plants that aspired to the sky 
Droop, and think of the bier. 

First Onion 
I am a disillusioned onion plant — 
So sad, so sad am I 
That if one fed me to a maiden ant 
She would curl up and die. 

Indeterminate Vegetable 
In youth, I hoped a Bean to grow — 
But what I am I do not know ! 

First Beet 
I have malaria, croup and botts. 

Second Beet 
I have such leprous-looking spots ! 

12 



A Commuter s Garden 

Third Beet 
I was a beet of promise, as a young beet ; 
But now I have the mournful feeling 
That neither root, nor top, nor peeling 
Will ever be fit to eat. 

Garter Snake 
Ah ! what a melancholy patch ! 

Toad 
Yon egg-plant there will never hatch ! 

Indeterminate Vegetable 
One paused by me but yesterday 
And spoke of me as hay — 
But what I really am I do not know. 

Cucumber Vine 
Strange insects walk me to and fro. 

Pepper Plant 
Had I been treated with formaldehyde 
The goat that in the dewy eves 
Came here to feed upon my leaves 
Might not have died. 

Second Onion 
The great splay feet of Destiny 
Have trodden me, have trampled me ! 

13 



A Commuter s Garden 

Rhubarb 
Ah, once I hoped to line a pie ! 

Cucumber Vine 
Will yon marauding hen pass by, 
Or must I die? 

Indeterminate Vegetable 
What thing I am I do not know ; 
Men have no name for me. 

Garter Snake 
I think you are a spinach vine. 

Toad 
And I should call you eglantine. 

Sparrow 
Perhaps you are a pea ! 

First Bean 
I was a bean ! 
Unto some glad tureen 
I might have given tone, 
But a dog yestere'en, 
Hiding a bone, 
Took from me all my mundane hope. 

Indeterminate Vegetable 
Sometimes I think I am a cantaloupe. 

14 



A Commuter s Garden 

Second Bean 
Drooping between two hills of corn, 
I am the butt of all men's scorn. 

Third Bean 
Ah, how I aspired 
In the glad May morn ! 

Fourth Bean 
I am so tired! so tired! 

Sparrow 
Friend Toad, from yonder plant keep you away ! 
I saw a neighbor child but yesterday 
From off its foliage pluck a spray. . . . 
And then how he yelled! 
And his hand turned black and swelled. 

Indeterminate Vegetable 
Perhaps I'm not a plant at all 
But some strange sort of animal. 

First Cabbage 
Pigeons have riddled me, and weasels. 

Second Cabbage 
I am spotted as with German measles. 

First Corn Stalk 
Woe! 

15 



A Commuter s Garden 

Second Corn Stalk 
Woe! 

Third Corn Stalk 
Woe is me ! Ah, woe, woe, woe I 

Fourth Corn Stalk 
Even the weeds beside me will not grow. 

First Turnip 
Gott! 

Second Turnip 
Gott ! Gott ! Gott ! 

Third Turnip 
Mildew, blight and rot! 

Fourth Turnip , 
And smallpox, like as not. 

Indeterminate Vegetable 
But cheer, brothers, cheer! 
Perhaps before the year 
Dwindles to winter drear 
We'll poison some one here ! 
I know not what I am, 
Parsley from Siam, 
A vegetable ham 
Or a Long Island clam — 
16 



A Commuter, s Garden 

But this I know : I hate 

My miserable state 

And all human beans! 

I hate life and fate! 

I hate men and greens! 

I hate hens and grass ! 

I hate garden sass! 

Who gets me on a plate 

Shall learn how I hate! 

I hate chards, romaine, 

Children and goats, 

Old men and young men, 

Cats, dogs and oats! 

And I am full of ptomaine — 

Who puts me within him, 

Scorpions had better skin him! 

Who puts me inside her 

Had better eat a spider! 

I know not what I be, 

Alfalfa, corn or pea — 

But cheer, brothers, cheer! 

Before the glad New Year 

We'll poison some one here! 



April Song 



FROM God-forsaken suburbs streaked with 
soot 
And miserable with mud, 
Past twisted trees that lack the sap to bud, 
Comes Spring, with shuffling gait, 
Red eyes and squelching boot, 
Rheumatic, ragged, wretched, sour as hate — •: 
Comes Spring, a-sneaking, slinking, 
Comes sore-eyed Spring, a-blinking, 
Comes Spring with clay upon her draggled gown. 

She makes a furtive sally, 
A tramp's attempt, and limps into the town 
Through some unguarded alley. 

Do dancing fauns, do wreathed nymphs attend 
her? 

Not currently, I fear — 

I watched her come this year — 
And in her train leapt cats uncouth and blear, 

Moth-eaten, gauntly slender: 
And frisked (to pipings of no cleanly Pan) 
From garbage can to thawing garbage can 
And passionately dug for fish heads there— 

These are her chosen sprites 
18 



April Song 

And through the damp, unhealthy nights 
They tear the reeking air 
With that saw-toothed and hell-born feline voice 
that blights 
And withers all things fair. 

Now icy pavements turn to thick, black grease, 

For melting Spring has come : 
And all the prisoned germs of all disease 

Now gambol in release, 
Now kick and frolic like wild goats 
And creep into a million gaping throats, 

For poisonous, wheezing Spring has come; 
Discouraged window boxes sadly strive 
To make last year's poor, sickly blooms revive; 

Displeasing Spring has come; 
And huddled subway crowds in sodden clothing 

Steam with a mutual loathing, 
For Spring, disgusting, sneezing Spring has come. 




Alphabet of Bible: Birds 
and Beasts 

WITH OCCASIONAL MORALS, FOR USE BY SUNDAY 
SCHOOLS, ETC. 

A IS the ASS whose jawbone smites 
Phi-lis-tines ... see it flail 'em! 
It also talks with Is-ra-el-ites . . . 
At least one spoke to Ba-laam. 
As you grow older, lads and lasses, 
You'll suffer from the jaws o£ asses. 

B is BE-HE-MOTH. Hey ! you kids, 

About Be-he-moth's cage, there, 
Don't feed him those tobacco quids ! 

You'll wake his Righteous Rage, there! 
That great blood-sweating beast could kick up 
She-ol as easy as you hiccough ! 

C for the crooked CAM-U-ELS. 

No matter how one wheedles, 
With accents sweet as Sam-u-el's, 

They will not crawl through needles ! 
20 



Alphabet of Bible 



For yon oasis see them humping 
To fill up on their annual pumping. 

D is the dear delugeous DOVE 

Who fluttered o'er the waters 
To wave an olive-leaf above 

Old Noah's sons and daughters. 
And Noah landing at an altar 
Fried one while Ham played on the psalter. 

E is the EAGLE. Note his eye ! 

He sails above the nations, 
A kind of watch-bird in the sky, 

From Kings to Revelations— 
A child that sees one spying, snooping, 
Had better pray ere it comes swooping ! 

F is the FOX that spoils the vines — 
I'm sure the Fox is right, child! 

He keeps bad men from making wines 
To get poor heathens tight, child! 

Sam-son made slaying them his mission 

Because he hated Prohibition. 

G is the GOAT of Gib-e-ah 
Who feeds on curds and cummin; 

Upon the crags he cries Ha ! ha ! 
From Mich-mash to Zan-zum-min. 
21 



Alphabet of Bible 



Mo-ses slew many Goats at Mo-ab, 
And Sol-o-mon made one of Jo-ab. 

H is the HEIFER spoken of, — 
Ho-se-a's Book, fourth chapter, — 

Who backslid, spite of kicks or love, 
Or if one coaxed or slapped her ; 

And naught is blinder, dumber, deafer 

To reason than a haughty Heifer. 

I is the ICHTHYOSAURUS which 

Became a floating prison 
With Jo-nah in a gastric niche 

Somewhere abaft the mizzen; 
Nor Fish nor Jo-nah took it kindly — 
Child, do not swallow too much blindly! 

J is the JACKAL that makes moan 

Where Bab-y-lon was mighty, 
And a bad King slumbers, overthrown, 

Oblivion for his nightie. 
My child, don't ever be a Mes'pot — 
Amian or Chaldean despot! 

K is the KID of Jer-i-cho, 

Who, when he heard the trumpets, 

Remarked, "That's grand-dad's horn, I know! 
He's come for tea and crumpets!" 
22 



Alphabet of Bible 



The walls fell then ; his neck was broken — 
Kids should not speak until they're spoken. 

L is the LION that refused 

A dinner off of Daniel, 
Which made the king so sore he used 

To cuff it like a spaniel — 
When guests drop in to dinner, Mable, 
Don't hang back, pouting, from the table. 

M is the MOTH to E-phra-im 

And into Ju-dah eating ; 
Ho-se-a somewhere mentions him, 

And says, "Your power is fleeting!" 
The lesson of Ho-se-a's annals 
Is, Guard your morals and your flannels ! 

N is the NIGHTINGALE that trilled 

Within the month of Ni-san 
When Sol-o-mon Queen Balkis filled 

With his own brew of hyson, 
His wit and proverbs o'er the teacups 
Charmed so she took two cups or three cups. 

O is the OSTRICH. Job remarks 

The bird is rather silly ; 
She leaves her eggs in public parks 

And lets them get all chilly — 

23 



Alphabet of Bible 



The bird, indeed, is scarcely proper; 
Read Job on her and the grasshopper. 

P for the PEACOCKS Hi-ram sent 
From Tar-shish and from Si-don, 

And everywhere a Peacock went 
He had an Ape to ride on; 

The vanity of these loud creatures, 

I trust, is dwelt on by your teachers. 

Q for the QUAILS they ate all raw- 
Chapter 11, Numbers — 

At windy Kib-roth-hat-ta-a-vah, 
And then passed to their slumbers. 

Garnish your birds with cress or romaine, 

And keep a sharp lookout for ptomaine. 

R is the RAVEN kind that fed 

Elisha (or Elijah?) 
When bad boys cried, "You old Baldhead, 

Go up, go forth and hide you !" 
Don't mock a bald head, flout it, scoff it, 
Merely because it's on a prophet. 

S is the SERPENT! Hear him hiss! 

A low-life and a snide, dears! 
Go look him up in Genesis, — 

Beware that subtile glide, dears ! 
24 



Alphabet of Bible 



Don't fall for him! Don't you believe a 
Serpent's statements, little Eva! 

T is for TOWSER— "dogs without," 

Says John, in Revelation. 
Without what, do I hear you shout? 

Honest occupation! 
And Satan finds some mischief still fer 
Idle hounds to do . . . they pilfer. 

U is the UNAU, or the Sloth. 

The Bible's full of warnings 
For lazy children who are loath 

To get up early, mornings! 
Some are so stiff I hate to print 'em, 
I only shake my head and hint 'em. 

V is the VULTURE; VIPER, too. 

Don't take 'em to your bosom! 
For once they get attached to you 

You find it hard to lose 'em ! 
Respectable communications 
Assist you in all life's relations. 

The well-known WORM is W. 

'Tis said he never dieth — 
The thought should somewhat trouble you- 

Eternally he f rieth. 

25 



Alphabet of Bible 



Be little gentlemen and ladies 

And try and keep away from Hades. 

X is the Unknown Quantity 

In Scripture commentary — 
The sort of arguments you see 

On Martha versus Mary. 
Bete noire it is to many kiddies — 
So we'll just skip him, chickabiddies. 

Y is the YOKE of Oxen that 

Were by their burdens broken ; 
They are in Gen., Lam., Deut. and Matt. 

And Tim. has likewise spoken 
In sympathetic fashion, rather, 
Of this subjugatory bother. 

Z is— did they have ZEBRAS then? 

In Zik-lag, or parts Zinn-ish? 
Hitt-ites, or Mo-ab-it-ish men? 

This Z, it is my finish ! 
But here's the Moral: dodge all swipes, boys, 
Be good and you'll keep out of stripes, boys ! 



A Fable 



ONCE there was a man of science 
Who had looked at little things for so 
long a time 
That he came eventually to deny 
The existence of big things . . . 
Every big thing in the universe, 
To his mind, 

Was merely a collection of little things. 
A comet did not interest him as a comet, 
Nor a planet as a planet, 
But he was curious as to the traits 
Of the infinitesimal particles of which comets and 

planets are composed . . . 
A world is not merely the sum of the parts which 

make a world ; 
It is the sum of the parts plus that something 

which makes the parts into a world . . . 
But the large, simple realities, 
The agglomerate masses endowed with definite 

form and singleness of character, 
Escaped him in his quaint search among atoms 

and electrons 
For ultimate truth . . . 
27 



A Fable 

He thought of a Man as so much salts and 

gases . . . 
But a Man is not that : a Man is a Man, 
And if you seek his soul biologically 
You progress towards that wilderness of diffusion 
Which the ancients called Chaos ; 
And your sanity will perish in a bedlam of 

nomenclature. 

Our friend the man of science, 

Looking at nothing but little things, 

Had come to feel a strange superiority to all 
things at which he looked . . . 

It was illogical, according to his own theory, and 
he was unconscious of it, but he did feel su- 
perior to all things at which he looked . . . 

And one day he looked at the sun ; 

It occurred to him to study the sun — 

And in an absent-minded mood he looked at the 
sun 

In the same manner in which he looked at every- 
thing else, 

He looked at it patronizingly, 

He looked at it, as he looked at everything, 

Through a microscope ... 

He had the microscope habit ... 

The sun does not like to be patronized, 
28 



A Fable 

Because it remembers the day when it was 

Apollo and a god. 
It spins, out there in space, with considerable 

dignity, 
And thinks highly of itself : 
If there were clubs out there where the sun lives 

the sun would be a member of the Union 

League Club . . . 

"God bless my soul!" said the sun, 

"Am I deceived, or is there somebody actually 

looking at me through a microscope! 
Heh ! 
Through a microscope ! What ? At me ! At the 

sun! Through a microscope! 
I'll fix him!" 

A moment later the scientist's wife said to him, 

"George, I smell something burning!" 

"I don't smell anything," said the man of science, 

"but I have an odd pain in my head." 
"George," said his wife, "you poor fool, I think 

it is you that I smell burning." 
"I think you are right, my dear," said the scien- 
tist, "I believe my eye is fried !" 
"Just like an egg\" said his wife, looking at it. 

"Ha! Ha!" said the sun. "You will look at me 
through a magnifying glass, will you? 

29 



A Fable 

I'll show you who's who in this solar system ! 
If I ever see you so much as tilting a drinking 
glass or a milk bottle in my direction again, 
I'll cook your other optic for you, too, 
Damn your eyes !" 

If you look at little things so much 

That you eventually deny the existence of big 

things, 
The big things, sooner or later, 
Will take their revenge upon you, 
Tragically or grotesquely. 



Another Villon-ous 
Variation 

STINGER and Gonoph and Peterman, 
Dip and Yegg that prig and prey, 
Flimp the thimble as fast as you can, 
But still in the end it doesn't pay ; 
Stick up a Boob or strong-arm a Jay, 
Snatch a Hanger or shove the Queer, 
And square the Bulls for a getaway — 
But where are the Crooks of Yesteryear? 

There's Cush in the Keck for a little span, 
Fagin or Booster may have his day, 
Shine with Ice like a new tin pan, 
But still in the end it doesn't pay ! 
Lagged by the Dicks of Fate are they 
Whether they lammister far or near — 
The lamps of justice are bum, you say? — 
But where are the Crooks of Yesteryear? 

No Stool may snitch or rap your plan, 
You may never be settled in Stir to stay, 
You never may ride in the Hurry-up Van, 
But still, in the end, it doesn't pay. 
The Level Lay is the only Lay, 
Take it from me as a friendly steer — 

31 



Another Villon-ous Variation 

The life of the Grafter is easy and gay? — 
But where are the Crooks of Yesteryear? 

Ask the Gonoph whose hair is gray 

And he'll tell you straight that it doesn't pay ; 

When he's young and flush the Gon may 

sneer — 
But where are the Crooks of Yesteryear? 



Proverbs xii 9 7 

FATE is the Gunman that all gunmen 
dread ; 
Fate stings the Stinger for his roll of 
green; 
Fate, Strong-arm Worker, on the bean 
Of strong-arm workers bumps his pipe of lead. 

Oh, cross guy, Fate is cross — a super crook 
That stands in with the dicks to get you 

jugged; 
Fate has you measured, numbered, tagged and 
mugged, 
And keeps your thumb prints in a little book! 

Take it from David's son, the thought profound : 
The Gonoph's due to go away from here! 
Where are the busy mobs of yesteryear? — 

Somehow we do not find them sticking round! 

Some lammistered to get a change of air. 
Some are in Stir. And some sat in the Chair. 



33 



Improbable Epitaphs 

HERE LIES 

THE BODY OF 

NICHOLAS WAX 

WHO LOVED 

TO PAY 

HIS INCOME TAX. 

* * * 

THERE LIES AT REST 

IN THIS EARTHLY BED 

THE MORTAL 

PART 

OF POTIPHAR JEDD 

WHO NEVER TOLD 

WHAT HIS CHILDREN SAID. 

* * * 

A REMARKABLE MAN 

WAS SOLOMON GAY 

WHO IS PLANTED 

HERE 

TILL THE JUDGMENT DAY. 

WHEN HE FOUND 

HE HAD NOTHING 

IMPORTANT TO SAY 

34 



Improbable Epitaphs 



HE WOULD KEEP HIS MOUTH 

SHUT 

AND GO ON HIS WAY. 

* * * 

LEONORA BUTTERFIELD 

WAS NEITHER 

SAINT NOR SINNER, 

GOOD TRAITS 

AND BAD TRAITS 

BALANCED WERE 

WITHIN HER, 

BUT SHE NEVER JAWED 

HER HUSBAND 

WHEN HE 

WAS LATE FOR DINNER. 

* * * 

THIS IS THE GRAVE 

OF 

TIMOTHY TETHER 

WHO NEVER KICKED 

ABOUT THE WEATHER. 

* * * 

OUT HERE IN THE COLD 

AND THE WIND 

AND THE RAIN 

IS THE GRAVE OF THE WIFE 

OF BENJAMIN BAYNE, 

35 



Improbable Epitaphs 



BELOVED TO THE LAST, 

FOR SHE NEVER SAID: 

"BEN, 

OF COURSE WHEN I'M DEAD 

YOU WILL MARRY AGAIN I" 

HERE LIE THE BONES 

OF ELIHU FOX 

WHO NEVER BRAGGED 

OF HIS DEALINGS 

IN STOCKS. 

* * * 

HERE BY THE ROOTS 

OF THIS OLD 

OAK TREE 

REPOSES THE BODY 

OF 

ELINOR LEE, 

AS LOVELY A WOMAN 

AS WOMAN 

COULD BE. 

SHE NEVER GOT CROSS, 

SHE NEVER SAW RED, 

WHEN HER SPOUSE BURNT HOLES 

IN THE SHEETS AND SPREAD 

ON SUNDAY MORNINGS, 

SMOKING IN BED. 

36 



The Gods at Coney Island 

Momus, the Jester of Olympus, dared 
To criticise the gods; Jove's anger flared 

In lightning, and he kicked the thing of mirth 
Forth from the outraged heavens, low as earth. 

The sequel hearken to, and ponder well: 
With Humor gone, the great Olympians fell. 

Lacking the tonic whip, the stinging mind, 
The gods turned gross and presently declined. 

They're strollers now, and antic for men's 

laughter, 
A draggled troupe, they follow Momus after — 

Immortal still, they are immortal brutes, 
Enslaved to their own lesser attributes. 
* * * 

I'm out at the Island. Here, on a dais, 
A troupe that is called "The Amusing Im- 
mortals." 
A quarter I paid to pass the portals, 

And sit at a table and see what the play is. 

37 



The Gods at Coney Island 

You waitress, come here! — You are Hebe? — 

Come hither! 
Hurry up with that stein! Do you want me to 

wither? 

Who's this doing stunts? Not Aphrodite? 

Venus, you're fat — but aren't you flighty! 
O Venus the blowsy, Venus the frowsy, ogle us, 
leer and wriggle; 
Undulate, Venus, mocking the motion, 
Over-voluptuous, wench, of the ocean; 
Cut as deep as the tin piano 
With the edge of your false soprano; 
Venus the tainted, 
Venus the painted, 
Stop the shrill ballad to kick out and giggle — 
Your bare, raddled shoulders thrust forth of 
your bodice, 
Venus the easy, 
Venus the greasy, 
Work on us, smirk on us, whirl your skirts 

over your knees — 
(She that was uttered a goddess 
Out of the mouth of the minstrel seas!) 

Wiggle, wench, wriggle, 
And maybe some drunkener drummer, 
Will take you to supper, poor mummer — 
Wriggle, wench, wiggle ! 

38 



The Gods at Coney Island 

Hither, my Hebe, my dubious maid, 
Fill up my seidel, you slatternly jade! 

And here's Bully Mars, the cock of immortals, 
The breaker of bars, the burster of portals, 
Looking fit, looking oily and sleek, 

Breathing of slaughter, 
Will box his four rounds with any old geek; 
Here's Poseidon, billed as the Tank Diving 
Greek, 
Eating a frankfurter under the water: 
And the Wild Man of Hades, who howls 
While Mistress Minerva exhibits her mar- 
velous Owls. 

Hebe! you Hebe! don't lop about there looking 

idle ! 
Don't you see that the gempm'n has finished his 

seidel f 

Here's Juno, the sour-visaged wretch, 
Comes next in a knock-about sketch 
Entitled, "The Trials of a Public Man's Spouse" ; 
Apollo, the tenor, and Bacchus, present 

A skit called "The Souse 
And the Musical Tramp," which brings down 
the house 

39 



The Gods at Coney Island 

With its humorous 
Kick-ups 
And numerous 
Hiccoughs 
So madly and merrily blent! 

Hebe, my beery one, hasten, my bleary one, 
A liter of light, in a hurry, my deary one! 



And now is the turn of that scowling old chap 

So sulky and bulky and stupid and stolid, 
Who rouses up snorting from out of his nap 
To toy with those ton-weighing dumbells, un- 
doubtedly solid; 
And next he's the base of a pyramid, 
With six buxom deities hoisted above him, 
Or maybe it's seven — 

One hopes it won't skid; 
It would break down the stage if it did — 
How the fair mortal dames used to love him 
When he was all Jove and ruled in his heaven! 
Now he does the Strong Man every night in 
this place from six to eleven. 
Groaning, his burdens under, 
He occasionally blasts, on a pay-day night, 
Some bung-starting, barbarous, bartending wight 
With a touch of the old-time thunder. 
40 



The Gods at Coney Island 

Hebe, my Hebe, whither, my Hebe? 

Come hither, my Hebe, come hither, my Hebe! 

Come floppily, Hebe, sloppily, Hebe, as fast as 

you're properly able, 
Perfectest pattern extant of the slattern, 
Serve the gent yonder who bangs on the table! 
* * * 

I sought the manager. Lame Momus grinned: 
"Not gods alone," the Jester said, "have sinned — 
High-stomached mortals in false dignity 
Have likewise frowned on wholesome comedy; 
And like these gods disgraced to jades and sots 
Man falls. With satire mute, the gross world 
rots." 



A Seaside Romance 

"■m JTY name," I said, "is Peleg Dod- 

\\ /I dleding, 

X.j JK And Doddleding has been my name 
since birth." 
And having told the girl this shameful thing 

I bowed my head and waited for her mirth. 

She did not laugh. I looked at her, and she, 
With wistful gladness in her yellow eyes, 

Swept with her gradual gaze the mocking sea. 
Then dried her gaze and swept the scornful 
skies. 

I thought perhaps she had not heard aright. 

"My name," I said again, "is Doddleding!" 
Thinking she would reply, "Ah, then, good- 
night — 
No love of mine round such a name could 
cling !" 

We'd met upon the beach an hour before, 

And our loves leapt together, flame and flame. 
I loved. She loved. We loved. "She'll love 
no more," 
I moaned, "when she learns Doddleding's my 
name !" 

42 



A Seaside Romance 



She was not beautiful, nor did she seem 
The sort of person likely to be good; 

Her outcast manner 'twas that bade me dream 
If any one could stand my name she could. 

She seemed a weakly sentimental thing, 
Vicious, no doubt, and dull and somewhat 
wried. 

I said once more, "I'm Mister Doddleding!" 
Feebly she smiled. I saw she had no pride. 

The westering sun above the ocean shook 
With ecstasy, the flushed sea shook be- 
neath. . . . 
I trembled too. . . . She smiled! . . . and one 
long look 
Showed something queer had happened to her 
teeth. 

world of gladness ! World of gold and flame ! 
"She loves me, then, in spite of all !" I cried. 

"Though Peleg Doddleding is still my name, 
Yet Peleg Doddleding has found a bride !" 

1 stroked her hair. ... I found it was a 

wig. . . . 

And as I slipped upon her hand the ring 
She said, "My name is Effie Muddlesnig — 

Oh, thank you ! Thank you ! Mister Dod- 
dleding !" 

43 



A Seaside Romance 



In all the world she was the only one 

For me, and I for her . . . lives touch and 
pass, 

And then, some day beneath a westering sun, 
We find our own ! One of her eyes is glass. 



An Ode to the Oyster 



IN the dim beginnings of Time, 
Ere the Plasm met up with the Prote, 
The Oyster lay nude in the slime, 
And that was an Eluvanote, 
That was an Eluvanote! 
Lay nude, off the coast of Nantucket, Nan- 
tucket, Nantucket, 
As nude as a bug in a bucket ! 
And the Oyster was coy, he was bashful, em- 
barrassed and shrinking, 
And he blushed as a nose 
That belongs to a person enamored of drinking; 
He blushed from his cerebrum down to his toes, 

He blushed as a rose, 
And he cried through the primeval dark: 
"Gimmie clo'es! 
Gimmie clo'es! 
I feel so infernally naked and stark! 
Lords of the universe, hark to me, hark! 
Gimmie clo'es! 

45 



An Ode to the Oyster 

I am fain to retire from this world to a cloister 

Of shell; 
I haven't the temperament needful to royster, 

To royster, to ramble, to doister, 
All nude in the depths where the sea urchins 
dwell. 
I am modest, I am, 

I am, I am, 
I'm as coy as the King of Siam, 
Siam, Siam, 
And I wanta be clothed like the clam ! 
As I lie here in gloom, getting moister and 

moister, 
I suffer because I am nude — 
I trust that I am not a prude, 
But I suffer because I am nude ! 
Be Moral, O Cosmos, and furnish a shell for 
thine Oyster!" 



II 

Ere ever the Prote had met up with the Plasm, 

Out of the depths came the voice, out of the 
murk of the night, 

The plaint of the Oyster soaring out of his ulti- 
mate chasm ; 

And it reached a clerk of the Cosmos perched 
on an ultimate height, 
46 



An Ode to the Oyster 

Who rubbed the sleep from his head 

And peered down the void and said: 
"Of these prayers I grow weary! Ah, weary 
and wearier! 

Some day, with a yell, 

I will rush from this cell 
And beg 'em to sing something cheerier! 
And yet, yonder Oyster that dwells down there 

in the ocean, 
No doubt his petition proceeds from an honest 

emotion — 
He is as nude as was great Aphrodite 

When sculped by Phidias, 

Whose morals, so hideous, 
Gave the goddess not even a nightie — 

A nightie, a nightie, 
Yon Oyster lacks even a nightie ! 
Whether he lies off Nantucket, 
Or drifts in the tides of Cape Horn, 
And wishes he hadn't been born, 
He's as bare as a bug in a bucket — 
No wonder he feels embarrassed, no wonder he 

feels forlorn! 
What grief to toss among the tides of bleak 
Nantucket 

As bare as a bucket, 
Wishing one hadn't been born !" 



47 



An Ode to the Oyster 
in 

This is a Moral Universe, and not a mere in- 
different machine, 
Whatever neo-vitalists may say, 
As Moral as a Woman's Magazine, 

As straight-laced as a bale of hay ; — 
It loves the Noodle and abhors the Nude, 
The Tree of Life drapes all its Limbs with 

leaves, 
And over all the book of life the cosmic censor 
grieves 
At such allusions as allude 
To anything undraped and crude. 
And therefore, when the Oyster's cry, 
Out of the sapphire sea-caves mounting climbed 

the aery sky, 
The cosmic rulers, peering down at far Nan- 
tucket, 
Exclaimed, glad eyed: 
"If we gave you a shirt would you shuck it?" 
To whom the hopeful bivalve straight replied: 
"If you gave me a shell for a shirt I would 
tuck it 
Over myself like the clam ! 
I hope that you won't think me selfish 
For wanting a bit of a nightie, 
But I would be known as a shellfish! 
A model, a modest young shellfish, 
48 



An Ode to the Oyster 

A shellfish that never gets flighty ! 

I am modest, I am, I am! 
Vouchsafe me but a shell, and I will never rush 

Out of my shell 

With a heluva yell, 
But will stay safe within, in the deep ocean hush, 
And feel myself superior, 
In that sweet cell's interior, 
To all things inferior 
That seek to leave their cloister — 
And when I think on all that is not of the genus 

oyster 
Then will I blush and blush and blush and 
blush !" 

IV 

So it was, in the dim dawn of time, ere the 

Prote was wed to the Plasm, 
That the plea of the Oyster was heard, and a 
shell was sent down to his chasm. 
Strong in his moral notion, 
As the slow cycles multiplied, 
At last in myriads the Oyster left his native 

Ocean, 
Shell-brained and oyster-souled and clammy- 
eyed, 
Invaded earth, and strong and virtuous of heart, 
Impressed his Morals on a great nation's Art. 
These oysters you may see, 

49 



An Ode to the Oyster 

With dull eyes, giving art its laws to-day, 

Each little bivalve deity 

Rejoicing in his sway. 
But as for me — I don't givadam, I don't giva- 

dam, 
I'd much rather write of the King of Siam, 

Siam, Siam 
Than have this oyster art the god of me — 
You may think it odd of me, 
Odd of me, odd of me, 
But I'd rather write odes to the King of Siam. 




■*•«-?* 



A Tragedy of the Deep 



THOUGHT may, at times, be a very dan- 
gerous thing . . . 
It is better never to use conscious thought 
Until instinct has flivveied. 
There was once an Octopus 
Who was very proud of his eight legs . . . 
They were long and slithery and beautiful, 
And he would sit on his ear 
And wave them in front of his face in the water 
And admire them by the hour. 
A Shark, who had no legs or tentacles at all, 
Used to watch the Octopus, 
And he grew weary of the Octopus's self- 
content . . . 
One day, with a most malicious intention, 

51 



A Tragedy of the Deep 

The Shark said to the Octopus: 

"Your tentacles, or legs, or whatever you call 
them, 

Are very pretty indeed : 

And it pleases me to observe your continuing 
enthusiasm with regard to them . . . 

I have never seen you swim . . . 

May I ask you, when you swim, which leg do 
you wiggle first? — 

The right-hand leg in front? 

The right-hand leg behind? 

The right-hand leg in front of the right-hand 
leg behind? 

Or the right-hand leg behind the front right- 
hand leg? 

Or do you begin with one of the left-hand 
legs?" 

The Octopus said: "Why, I start with . . ." 

And then he stopped . . . 

He had always swum before without think- 
ing .. . 

He had always swum by instinct . . . 

How did he start? 

With the front leg on the left-hand side? 

Or the front leg on the right-hand side? 

For the life of him he couldn't remember . . . 

He tried one set of legs, and it didn't seem the 
proper way; 

52 



A Tragedy of the Deep 

And he tried another set, and they weren't the 

right ones . . . 
And he stopped trying and thought and thought 

and thought . . . 
And the more he thought the less able he was 

to swim at all. 
To draw this painful story to a conclusion at 

once, 
The Octopus sat in the midst of his legs 
Looking wanly at the subaqueous world 
Until he starved to death 
Through his inability to catch food. 
The moral is, Never think as long as you can 

dodge thought. 



Pantoum of the Pilfered 
Pups 

Where, oh, where has my little dog gone? — Old song. 



m 



HERE has my little dog gone? 

Grief is wrecking my reason. 
(He vanished in the Dawn.) 

This is the Sausage Season. 



LOST, terrier, pure white, male, four years old, 
neighborhood 123d st., 8th ave.; reward. — Newspaper 
ad. 

Grief is wrecking my reason. 

(/ doubt thee, Butcher Man.) 

This is the Sausage Season. 

( Meat-selling Caliban ! ) 

Provisions are steady. — Market report. 

I doubt thee, Butcher Man — 
His collar with gold was crusted, 

Meat-selling Caliban! 

He had a heart that trusted. 

Boston man loved his dog so that he left it $1,200 a 
year in his will. — News story. 

His collar with gold was crusted — 
(O Butcher, whet and smile!) 

He had a heart that trusted; 
Thy heart is full of guile! 

54 



Pantoum of the Pilfered Pups 



Coats of black dogskin at $29.75. — From a depart- 
ment store ad. 

O Butcher, whet and smile, 
My doubt of thee profound is! 

Thy heart is full of guile — 
And sausage two shillings a pound is! 

Owners of lost dogs . . . may apply to A. S. P. C. A., 
Ave. A and 24th st. — Newspaper ad. 

My doubt of thee profound is: 
He oft paused by thy door! 

And sausage two shillings a pound is! 
He lingered near thy store! 

If the price of meat continues to rise, where are we 
to look for our food supply? — From an article on the 
cost of living. 

He oft paused by thy door — 

O Butcher enterprising! 
He lingered near thy store — 

The price of sausage is rising! 

Strong interests on the buying side and offerings 
small. — Market report. 

O Butcher enterprising, 

Where has my little dog gone? 

The price of sausage is rising: — 
He vanished in the Dawn! 



55 



The Country Barber Shop 

THE barber tucked beneath my chin an 
aged towel and frayed, it was as worn 
as grief or sin, the hair on it had 
grayed . . . 



And then a woman ambled in to buy three 
yards of braid . . . 



The barber sold it while he mixed the lather 
for my face . . . 



She left a watch to get it fixed . . . 



It was a various place 



The barber swept his laden brush across my 
left hand cheek . . . 



Then left me flat . . . 



There was a rush of business that week! 



A little girl came in to buy a pencil for her 
slate, and so he let the lather dry in smears from 
chin to pate. 

56 



The Country Barber Shop 



He washed it off . 



He seized his strop 



He swung his veteran blade ... a voice re- 
marked, "The cabbage crop ain't much, I be 
afraid!" And then he bought (the man who 
spoke) a "Good Five Cent Segar" and with 
the barber cracked a joke beside the soft drink 
bar . . . 



The barber seized the lather cup . . . 

Gilt-lettered : 

SIMON GREER 



And quickly mixed a fresh batch up, and 
quenched me, ear to ear . . . 



He seized the strop 
Gave it a toss . . . 



And smacked that mordant steel . . . 



And then he paused to put across a life in- 
surance deal. 

57 



The Country Barber Shop 

Much of the lather dried . . . although my 
eyes continued damp . . . 



The patient barber left them so and went to 
sell a stamp. 



I noticed that he cobbled shoes 



Sold tacks . . . 
And chicken wire 



He dealt in garters, dyes and glues . . . 



He'd boats and bait for hire 



He sold wall paper, collars, bread, victrola rec- 
ords, gum . . . 



The sign above his doorway read: "CLEAN 
SHAVE EMPORIUM." 



And ever when he lathered me a trickle of 
fresh trade meandered in all leisurely and balked 
his ancient blade. But, bless the man, he did 
not care! He took it with a grin and ran his 
elbows through my hair while lathering mouth 
and chin ... he soothed me with his pleas- 
ant air . . . 

58 



The Country Barber Shop 

I slept. 



My sleep was sound. 
I waked . . . 



And found he'd cut my hair . . . 



And shaved my neck 
All round . . . 



An ancient sitting by the stove and spitting in 
the door, a kind of mellow, ripe old cove who 
hadn't spoke before, came up and passed his 
critic thumb across my blushing neck: "I always 
get mine cut to hum, I always do, by hek! But 
when I get it cut next spring I'll tell my daugh- 
ter Vic to cut it just like this, by jing! I want 
it round and slick!" 



An Encyclopedia Affair 



T 



HE gay BOK-CAN was a gentleman 
In a coat of gold and green, O ! 

And he loved SIB-SZO from head to toe, 
Though the alphabet stretched be- 
tween, O ! 



"SIB-SZO," he would say, "you keep away 
From MOT-ORM and his doings, 

Distrust the lip of the glib GOU-HIP, 
And hearken to my wooings ! 

"Bokhara goats, dear ma'am, eat oats, 

And Burgundy grows good wine, ma'am! 
Camphor comes from vegetal gums, 

say that you'll be mine, ma'am!" 

But SIB-SZO sighed as she replied, 
"The simoon sweeps the sea, sir, 
Spinoza fought for the freedom of thought, 

1 cannot wed with thee, sir!" 

"Where will you find," he cried, "a mind 
More crowded with information? 

Edmund Burke was an eloquent Turk, 
Brazil is quite a nation! 
60 



An Encyclopedia Affair 

"The Buriat wears his cheek-bones flat, 

Browning wrote Sordello, 
The brachiopod is a creature odd, 

Do you love some other fellow?" 

She bowed her head and she wept and said, 

"Syzran is a city, 
Socrates scorned luxuries, 

What I feel for you is pity. 

"The sugar-bird is rather absurd, 

And steam will raise a blister, 
My sweetheart is the bold FAL-FYZ, 

But I will be your sister !" 

BOK-CAN did choke, and sadness broke 

The heart in his noble bust, sir, 
URA-ZYM found an urn for him 

And DUG-EF claimed his dust, sir! 



The Ghost and the 
Monument 

9 f I A WAS the night of All Souls, and some 
specters, 
1 Finding Eternity hanging heavy on their 
hands — 

(As Time does on the hands of the heroes in 
fiction) — 

In a half sentimental and half ironical mood 

Paid a visit to Earth. 

And one Shade sought the streets of a town 

Where he had been born and lived out his strenu- 
ous years . . . 

And there, in a great central square, 

Was a Monument builded, 

A massive bronze bulk of a thing in the moon- 
light. 

"Strange," murmured the Shade, "but I cannot 
remember 

This statue . . . 

I wonder how long I've been dead ? 

I wonder what man among men in this stupid old 
city of mine 

Has thus been immortalized." 

(And the ghost of a ghostly sneer rippled the 
fog of his face 

62 



The Ghost, and the Monument 

As he said "immortalized.") . . . 

"Statue," he said to the Bronze, "what Beautiful 

Life 
Has been systematically uglified in you 
So as to bring it down to the comprehension of 

my some time Fellow Citizens ?" 
And the great bronze bulk 
(With the moon on its lips as dawn on the mouth 

of a Memnon) 
Shivered and spoke : 
"I am a Symbol of Love, 
Built from the Gratitude, Respect, Admiration 

and Devotion 
Of this City, 

In Honor of the Noblest of its Noble Sons, 
In recognition of his Services to the Community, 
To the Nation, 

And to the Cause of Humanity in General . . . 
And I was Unveiled thirty-seven years ago, 
Come next Michaelmas, 
With Appropriate Ceremonies, 
The Mayor's Little Daughter pulling the string 
And five Governors, two Senators, the President 

of the United States 
And two ex-Presidents being among those pres- 
ent and speaking . . ." 
"There is," said the Ghost, "something vaguely 

familiar 

63 



The Ghost and the Monument 

About your general outlines . . . 

There is character in the shoes, somehow, 

And something that I seem to know in the 

cravat . . . 
But I can't say I remember your face ..." 
"If you were Anybody At All," 
Said the Monument, 
"You must either have known me or heard about 

me when you lived here . . . 
The man I Honor was the most Popular Man in 

Town . . . 
Loved by All, 

Rich and Poor alike. . . ." 
"I wasn't Anybody At All when I lived here," 
Said the Ghost, with a smile. 
"I might have been, but the people wouldn't let 

me . . . 
I was the most Unpopular person that ever dwelt 

here, 
And they finally got rid of me. . . ." 
And the Ghost continued to smile, somewhat 

sadly, 
As the recollection of his life on earth flooded 

over him . . . 
How, out of his immense, deep love for all his 

fellow men 
He had striven to lead them to the light . . . 
64 



The Ghost and the Monument 

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who stonest the Proph 
ets," 

He quoted, 

"How often I would have folded my wings over 
you, 

As a hen over her chickens . . . 

But ye would not !" 

"The Funeral of the man I Honor," 

Said the Monument, 

"Did not take so long to Pass a Given Point 

As some others that might be mentioned, 

But I have heard that that was due to a mis- 
understanding . . . 

But why do I talk to a mere Nobody, such as 
you, of these things? 

What were you, anyhow, when you were 
here?" 

"No one," said the Ghost, "to whom a 

Monument would have been erected . . . 

Some even called me the communal enemy . . . 

They said I was an atheist — 

Although, God knows, I wasn't! — 

They said that I was a criminal . . . and proved 
it because they made me herd with crimi- 
nals . . . 

But the thing that angered them most was that 
I went on loving them 

And helping them . . . 

65 



The Ghost and the Monument 

They finally became so angry that they drove me 
from their midst . . ." 

("From their Midst!" interrupted the Monu- 
ment, with solid, heavy satisfaction . . . 
"from their midst" being exactly the sort of 
phrase monuments can understand.) 

"From their midst," said the Ghost. 

"And I wandered in the wilderness and died . . . 

There being no ravens to feed me, as was the 
case with Elijah, or Elisha, or whichever 
one it was. 

No, no, I should never have had a monument 
builded to me in this town. 

They hated me because I loved them, and killed 
me." 

"The man whom I Honor," said the Monument, 

"Bore the name of Smithers . . . 

Reginald G. Smithers . . . 

I think I have heard that through some re 
grettable Misunderstanding 

He also Left our Midst 

And Passed His Last Days in Comparative Pov- 
erty and Retirement." 

"Smithers ?" said the Ghost, scratching the wraith 
of dandruff from his spectral poll with the 
ghost of his hand . . . 

"Smithers?" Somehow that name seems fa- 
miliar to me . . . 

66 



The Ghost and the Monument 

Why, hang it all, I remember now ! 
Reginald G. Smithers was my name !" 

And as the situation dawned on the spirit 

He gave a thin little tinkling laugh of derision, 

As if a sliver of icy moonlight were splintering 

itself against metal, 
And in a whorl of mist he sped away. 



The Toonerville Trolley 

To F. Fox 

WHEN I get a little bit older 
I'd like to be done with hard 
knocks, 
And I think I'll apply for a job to 

The well-known cartooner, F. Fox; 
For I want to hire out as the Skipper 

(Who dodges life's stress and its strains) 
Of the Trolley, the Toonerville Trolley, 
The Trolley that Meets all the Trains. 

It runs (when its humor's for running) 

Through a country that's sweetly at rest — 
Through a country that loafs with its coat off 

And three buttons gone from its vest. 
And I want to hire out as the Skipper 

Who, whether it shines or it rains, 
Runs the Trolley, the Toonerville Trolley, 

The Trolley that Meets all the Trains. 

Unhurried, unflurried, unworried, 

By Chronos completely unvext, 
If I should miss a train I would murmur: 

"Perhaps I'll connect with the next!" 
68 



The Toonerville Trolley 

If I then missed the next one, no matter ! 

I shouldn't go blow out my brains 
If the Trolley, the Toonerville Trolley, 

Should fail to meet some of the trains. 

In the end, when I met up with Charon, 

Waiting there by the Stygian bank, 
I'd remark to him, "Oarsman immortal, 

You can't impress me with your swank! 
You treat me as Skipper to Skipper — 

My corpse is no common remains ! — 
For I ran the Trolley, the Toonerville Trolley, 

The Trolley that Met all the Trains !" 



The Rubber Plant 



w 



ITHIN a Brooklyn drug store stood 

a rubber plant forlorn; 
All dusty were its faded leaves, its 
look was sad and worn ; 



I never saw a rubber plant that had so drear a 

mien — 
It looked like Thursday's oil upon a Saturday 

sardine. 

And damp upon a leaf I saw a gray, lugubrious 

smear ; 
I asked the druggist what it was ; he said : "Alas, 

a tear! 

"This rubber plant was brought to me when 

Ellie broke with Fred — 
Sweet Ellie had to give him up," the sad-eyed 

druggist said. 

"Oh, they were happy, fond and true ere ever 

he touched Rum, 
And in a German orchestra he joyed to beat the 

drum. 

70 



The Rubber Plant 



"This rubber plant an heirloom was; the day 

that they were wed 
Sweet Ellie's ma, with solemn words, entrusted 

it to Fred. 

"And all went well till one sad night companions 

free and wild 
Across the Bridge to mad New York young 

Frederick beguiled; 

"There in a gay cafe he sat and beat his merry 

drum — 
But ere the chimes of midnight tolled Fred's lips 

were stained with Rum ! 

"That ruined him; in Brooklyn town his drum 

no more he'd play; 
He joined a band that played o' nights in a wild 

New York cafe. 

"You must not think that Frederick was alto- 
gether bad, 

For once he loved this rubber plant ere Rum 
became his fad. 

"But one black night of sin and shame he strove 

to give it drink — 
He dashed Rum o'er its tender leaves and laughed 

to see them shrink! 

71 



The Rubber Plant 



"Sweet Ellie could not bear the blow; with 

screams of wild affright 
She hugged the plant unto her heart and rushed 

into the night ; 

" 'Twas snowing ; but at last she reached a grim 
old Brooklyn aunt — 

Ellie she took but would not house the rum- 
stained rubber plant!" 

I never saw a plant that looked so dreary and so 

worn; 
It seemed as glum as Sunday's roast upon a 

Tuesday morn. 

I never saw a rubber plant so sickly and so sad — 
It looked like Wednesday's garnishment upon a 
Friday shad ! 

"It needs a bath," the druggist said. "It needs a 
brush and comb — 

It needs, alas ! the care it knew in its lost Brook- 
lyn home. 

3c if. if if S|e 

"Poor Fred ! he is repentant now. At dusk he oft 

will come 
To weep above the rubber plant, and softly beat 

his drum. 

72 



The Rubber Plant 



"And Ellie frequently drops in ostensibly to buy 
Her chewing gum and postage stamps — but casts 
a wistful eye 

"Upon the drooping rubber plant; — yet Ellie is 

so proud 
She will not stroke its little leaves, nor speak her 

grief aloud; 

"From out her life she strives to thrust love — 

and the rubber plant — 
She's been forbidden to forgive by that stern 

maiden aunt !" 

Just then a man slunk in the door ... he gently 

beat a drum ; 
His face was haggard with despair, yet bore no 

trace of Rum . . . 

And as he on a showcase leaned, and sadly 

drummed and low, 
A woman fair drew nigh the store with conscious 

steps and slow ; 

She did not deign one glance at him ; she proudly 

bought some gum . . . 
He spake no word, but, oh, his heart! his heart 

beat in his drum ! 

73 



The Rubber Plant 



She peeled the paper from her gum ; right haughty 

did she chew . . . 
All sobbingly along his drum his throbbing sticks 

he drew . . . 

She turns . . . she goes . . . how sternly now 

that rhythmic jaw is set ! 
He drops his drum . . . above the plant their 

brimming eyes have met ! 



The rubber plant ! The rubber plant ! it reached 

and clutched them right ! 
It grasped Her on its left hand side, and Him 

upon its right ! 

The rubber plant ! The rubber plant ! The plant 

they loved so well ! 
On that reviving rubber plant their mingling 

teardrops fell! 

They knelt beside the rubber plant; right faith- 
fully he swore 

To water it, and cherish it, and prune it ever- 
more! 



74 



The Rubber Plant 



He cares no more to cross the Bridge to beat his 

drum and roam ; 
He sits beside their rubber plant within their 

Brooklyn home ; 

And it is green and lustrous now, it is no longer 

sad . . . 
I never saw a rubber plant so glossy and so glad ! 




Sundered 



TIS the Bearded Lady is really a man, 
And his personal name is Tim, 
And he is in love with the Siamese 
Twins, 
And each twin loveth him. 

For his beard is long and his beard is red, 

And his heart is fond and true ; 
And the left twin's name it is called Mame 

And the right hand twin is Sue. 



"But you cannot marry us both," they cry, 

"Fair sir, it isn't done!" 
"But ye be not two, I look on you," 

Saith Tim, "as only one!" 
76 



Sundered 

" 'Tis each by each," they cry to him, 

" Tis separate we love you !" 
"No knife," he cried, "shall cut my bride — 

Shall cut my love in two !" 

"We both of us scorns," they make reply, 

All proper and all prim, 
"The like of such Mormonous goings on — 

No bigamy, Sir Tim!" 

"Ye love me now," saith he to them, 
"With the strength of a double heart — 

But how do I ken you would love me then 
If I had ye cut apart ?" 

"We are two," they cry, "you must make your 
choice, 

For love hath made us twain!" 
But he crieth to them, "What Providence joins 

Let no man sunder again !" 

Up speaks the Indian Rubber Man, 

A wight with a rambling skin, 
"They must wedded be lone she by she, 

Twin by separate twin !" 

Up speaketh the Living Skeleton, 

And a moral man is he, 
"One by one and each by each — 

Aught else were Mormonry !" 

77 



Sundered 

Up speaks the Man who Eateth Glass, 

A sickly swain and glum, 
"They are two," he saith, "And by my faith 

They must be chosen from !" 

" 'Od's wounds, and is it so ?" saith Tim, 

And biteth of his beard, 
"I yield to a jury of my peers — 

Natheless, I be afeard. 

"I am afeard, for I have heared, 

And ta'n the words to heart; 
'Tis ill, when Providence hath joined, 

For man to cut apart !" 

Lo, now the eager Surgeon Man, 
Who whetteth his bright knife — 

And smooth and quick the blade doth snick- 
He crieth, "Choose thy wife !" 

But, oh, alas ! for surgery — 

Alack ! for love and Tim ! 
Together the two had loved him true — 

Apart they love not him. 

For left-hand twin and right-hand twin 

They spurn him one by one, 
And Mame doth pair with the Glass Eataire, 

And Sue with the Skeleton ! 

78 



. Sundered 

And Tim, he shaveth off his beard, 

And broken is his heart, 
And he puts on breeks and he leaves the freaks 

As he giveth up his Art. 

And he ever moans and he ever sobs, 

And ever he saith, and again, 
"What Providence joineth together as one, 

Let no man sunder in twain !" 



Votes for Women! 

Anti-Suffragist 

TUT, tut, my little Kate and Nellie, 
Don't try to rival Machiavelli ! 
This suffrage growth is just — good gra- 
cious ! — 
A weedy plant boraginaceous ; 
Meg, Sue, you never can be Platos : 
Back to your dustpans and potatoes ! 
Go spank the kids and wash the dishes; 
Your yearning for the ballot's vicious ! 
Pray, beat this fact into your dome, Peg : 
Your hat should hang upon the home peg ! 

Suffragist 
Kind sir, my little home aforesaid 
And I have never been divorced — 
Full oft I sit there cooking scallion 
Calm as a queen on a medallion, 
Long hours I bide there washing spinach 
Cool as the Meridian of Greenwich ; 
My domiciliary mansion 
I view with cardiac expansion, 
My feeling for it is so gentle 
It borders on the sentimental ! 
80 



Votes for Women! 



Anti 
Why, then, thy sufif ragistic hustings ? 
Thy longing for the vulgar hustings? 
Back, Froward Minx ! retreat thee fleetly, 
Lest Man should lose his goat completely! 
His anger waxes : beat it, Nora ! 
For time is passing — fugit hora — 
Recant ! retreat ! another minute 
May hold the very devil in it — 
Abjure the civic hurly-burly, 
Doll, dear, and be a Docile Girlie! 

Suff 
Male person, Duty, as I scan it, — 
And feeling so, how could I can it? — 
Bids me to sweep and mop this planet! 
I find in cleanliness the male, sir, 
Doth most conspicuously fail, sir; — 
I think I'll give the earth a scrubbing, 
And after that Man gets his tubbing ! 
Life is so sick it fairly wheezes 
With its political diseases ; 
I'll clean out all the vice and souse work 
And never miss a day at housework; 
For politics, my lubber man, sir, 
Is housework on a larger plan, sir, — 
Canst find a pertinent response, there, 
Within thy scutellated sconce, there? 
81 



Votes for Women! 



Anti 
You've been misled by mystagogues, Prue, 
Into strange feministic bogs, Prue, — 
Sloughs where the firefly and the wampus 
Flit round us while the quicksands swamp us; 
The light you think a moon for bigness 
Is just the well-known Foolish Ignis. 
I still contend that Woman's place is 
Washing children's socks and faces, 
And looking sweet and cooking sago 
And tending to her lord's lumbago, 
Sal, when you shoot at civic matters 
Your little load of birdshot scatters ! 
Be home a cottage or a palace, 
You hadn't orter leave it, Alice ; 
And if you think you can extend it, 
Old Bess, you'll break or badly bend it ! 

Suff 
Your cerebrum and cerebellum, 
Dear Man, are full of slippery ellum ! 
You do not argue, you just rave, Man! 
Why can't you see, my worthy Cave Man, 
That Earth's my Home, and I do stay there, 
And mean to clear the trash away there? 

Anti 
The stunt you purpose pulling, Lizzie, 
Has left earth's greatest foiled and dizzy ! 
82 



Votes for Women! 



What you bite off in contemplation 

Exceeds your powers of mastication ; — 

The job you've got before you, Mattie, 

Would make a demigod go batty. 

I speak in ire now rather less, Mayme, 

Than sorrow, Mayme, to you and Tess, Mayme ; 

Confronted with your task, Xanthippe, 

Old Bill Q. Jove himself gets dippy ! 

Suff 

If man can't do it — mighty man, sir! — 
We'll mother up a race that can, sir! 
And if th' immortals balk and scrimp us 
We'll have a new deal on Olympus! 
Indeed, for all that I or you know, 
Bill Jove right now, — or pretty soon, O ! — 
Is fifty-fif tying with Juno ! 



To a Lost Sweetheart 



R 



« JT\AIN falls" you moaned one time, 
"for rain 
Has little else to do!" 
I sit beside a sobbing drain 
To-day and think : How true ! 



ii 
When first into my life you came 

I was so mad and gay ! 
Monday, I smiled. I did the same 

(O God!) on Saturday. 

in 
Once, hand in hand, we stood beside 

A Pharaoh's mummy case ; 
"How dried!" you wept, "How brown and 
dried!" 
And hid your wistful face. 

IV 

Since then I seldom greet a corse, 

Historical or new, 
With mockery but I feel remorse, 

As you would have me do. 
84 



To a Lost Sweetheart 



V 

One March you wailed to me : "The frost 

Is still deep in the earth!" 
I pondered this until I lost 

My wilder mood of mirth. 

VI 

When Whistler's Mother's Picture's frame 

Split, that sad morn, in two, 
Your tense words scorched me like a flame- 

You shrieked, "Ah, glue! Get glue!" 

VII 

O Glue ! O God ! there was not glue 

Enough in all the feet 
Of all the kine the wide world through 

To hold you to me, Sweet ! 

VIII 

You left me that drab day the wild 
Winds bore the stout man's hat 

Adown the howling street ... I smiled . 
"How bald!" moaned you. "How fat!" 

IX 

You wed a man could give you all 

The gloom I had not felt, 
And in his dank ancestral hall 

Hourly in tears you melt. 

85 



To a Lost Sweetheart 



Sweet, we are severed ! But your stamp 

Endures for aye on me — 
" Tis damp," I moan, "the river's damp," 

And, probably, the sea!" 

XI 

I oft stand in the snow at dawn, 
Harking the drear church chime, 

Thinking long thoughts, with arctics on, 
And wailing: "Winter time!" 

XII 

And oft beside this sobbing drain 

I droop and muse on you — 
"Rain falls," you wept, "because 'tis rain!" 

How true! (I cry). How true! 

XIII 

I never laugh as ere you came 

Into my life, nor play. 
Mondays, I sob. I do the same 

(O God!) on Saturday. 



The Incendiary Sex 

HELEN out of Hellas came, 
Finding home-life slightly slow, 
Towered Troy to set aflame : 
Priam's whiskers to and fro 
Waved and withered in the glow 
Like a bunch of spinach greens ; 
Priam murmured, sad and low, 
"Arson is the sport of Queens!" 

Nero's spouse, the flighty dame, 

Was a fire fanatic, so — 
Knowing he would get the blame — 

Touched off Rome and let 'er blow! 

Nero said, "She loves a show, 
Dotes on pyrotechnic scenes, 

Sparkles please her, don't you know! 
Arson is the sport of Queens." 

Cleopatra loathed a tame 

Tepid time or bashful beau — 
Cats called her a burning shame — 

Kate of Russia's wrath, I trow, 

87 



The Incendiary Sex 



Scorched the circumjacent snow; 
Many a princess in her teens 

Thought a torch was made to throw : 
Arson is the sport of Queens. 

Modern Woman, should you grow 
Peeved and burn our old machines 

Civic, moral — let 'em go: 

Arson is the sport of Queens! 



Grotesques 



WAS it fancy, sweet nurse, 
Was it a dream, 
Or did you really 
Take hold of my scalp lock 
When I was half asleep this morning 
And open up a trap door in my skull 
And drop a poached egg in among my brains?' 
Was it a dream, sweet nurse, 
Or did you really do that? 

ii 

Excuse me, 

Said the fellow next to me on the subway, 
But I think you are going too far 
On short acquaintance. 
What do you mean? I asked him. 
You have picked out my left eye and eaten it, 
He told me. 

I beg a thousand pardons ! I exclaimed. 
I thought it was a pickled onion ! 
Oh, well, he said, it was a natural mistake — 
Don't feel too bad about it. 
89 



Grotesques 

But I do, I replied ; it was so stupid of me, 

I regret it frightfully. . . . 

You mustn't, he said, for after all I have 

Another eye. 

But I beg you to believe, I said, that I am not the 

sort of person 
Who would do a thing like that deliberately ; 
I was merely absent-minded . . . 
You take it far too seriously, he protested . . . 
But, said I . . . 
He interrupted me angrily-^— 
You are beginning to bore me with your damned 

tiresome apologies! he said. 

in 

I sometimes think that I will 

Quit going to dinner parties . . . 

Why, oh, why did I get the notion last evening 

That Mrs. Simpkins's face was a slot machine 

And that the macaroons were pennies? 

Why, oh, why did I take her by the ears and 

shake her head 
Back and forth when no chewing gum 
Dropped out of her double chin? 
Damn you, Mrs. Simpkins, I said to her, 
Shoving in another macaroon, 
I'll see if you have any postage stamps, then! 
I must, I really must, 

90 



Grotesques 

Quit doing that sort of thing — 

I could see last night that people were beginning 

To wonder if I drink, or anything . . . 

And then Mr. Simpkins told me that if it wasn't 

For embarrassing my wife still further 

He would kick me into the street . . . 

Oh, well, I said, don't you worry about my wife, 

You go and get your own wife fixed 

So she doesn't look like a slot machine 

And we won't have any words . . . 

I can always get the better of people in repartee 

Like that, but somehow I am getting 

Fewer and fewer invitations to dinner parties . . . 

People think I drink, or something. 



The Determined Suicide 

JUST as I raised a pistol to my head 
From somewhere came a voice that said: 
"Don't pull that trigger ! Let that weapon 
fall! 
Perhaps it is not loaded, after all, 
And think how silly one appears 
Snapping unloaded firearms at one's ears!" 
To be ridiculous I can't abide . . . 
I wept, and flung the gun aside ... 
For even should each chamber bear its proper 

load 
How did I know the cartridge would explode? 
Sometimes they don't explode, and I 
Was firm resolved that I would die; 
The hurrying thought that I might fail 
Through some miscalculation, turned me pale. 
And then there dawned on me the hope 
That I might hang myself . . . but as the rope 
I looped about my neck the still voice cried : 
"Don't take this thoughtless way of suicide ! 
Some meddling fool may come and cut you down, 
And then the crass, unsympathetic town 
Will laugh !" 

I'm sensitive ; I never could stand chaff ; 
92 



The Determined Suicide 

No foolish anti-climax must attend 

This thing . . . my end must be a tragic end! 

I took my razor from the shelf . . . 

The voice said : "Brute, you think of naught but 
self ! 

Should you use that your spouse would never 
care, 

Thereafter, of a Sunday morn, to pare 

Her corns with that accustomed and familiar 
blade!" 

I had not thought of that ... I laid 

The lethal thing away, and sadly went 

Out of the house all choked with manly senti- 
ment . . . 

Ah, Brute, indeed ! 

To rob a woman in her hour of need . . . 

How should I kill myself? What certain way 

To creep out of the garish light of day? 

It must be sure ; and I began to see 

All swift, traditional ways were barred to me . . . 

This was a further earnest of the hate 

In which myself was held by Fate . . . 

Some sure way it must be; sure way, but 
slow; 

Some gradual way, since Fate had willed it so. 

Why not, through all the bitter years, 

Of disillusion, balked ambition, tears, 

With stern, set face and laboring breath 

93 



The Determined Suicide 

Eat . . . eat and eat . . . and eat myself to 

death? 
Titanic steak, Gargantuan chop and Brobdig- 

naggian pie, 
Each one succeeding each, until I die ! 
Ah, eighty years are not too much to give 
To suicide, when one has sworn: "I will not 

live!" 



The Pseudo-Wit 

I SANG, some years ago, the Brainstorm 
Slum, 
Peopled of Freak and Fake and Psychic 
Bum; 
Later, our friend Hermione appeared 
With her glib platitudes and fancies weird — 
She's found some friends, and two or three that 

hate, 
And one or two that strive to imitate — 
And as the weeks go by I do propose 
To add still further sketches unto those. 

One tempts me now, a not uncommon type ; 
The Pseudo-Wit, with which the time is ripe — 
Quick to pick up the current catch or phrase 
And share applause by citing it with praise, 
Adapting well the whimsey of the hour, 
But slight and thin and lacking vital power; 
Wit's very trick and manner, smack and tone, 
Wit's everything — excepting wit alone! 
Still jealous of the force that can create, 
Yet what's created, stung to imitate; 
If Jones says this, or Smith or Brown says that, 
Subservient quotes, and gives a friendly pat, 

95 



The Pseudo-Wit 



But as he quotes, a something in his tone 

Robs Jones or Brown and makes the quip his 

own — 
Still, if the quoted thing should fail to hit, 
'Twas said by Jones or Brown, 'twas not his wit ! 



^Were this sleight all, slight harm were this pre- 
tense, 
For slight things' sleightness gives but slight of- 
fense : 
The trait that wakes to wonder and to mirth 
Is Pseudo-Wit's attempt to judge the earth; 
To pose as Critic ; give, withhold, a crown, 
Or swelling, strive to drag a great name down; 
Or cry out from out his windy emptiness 
That Boggs or Bings has really earned Success, 
Though none has questioned Boggs's, Bings's 

fame 
These dozen years ; he seeks to tie his name, 
As 'twere a tail unto these rising kites. 
To show us stars his little dip he lights ! 
Still stirred by inward envies killing ease 
He lets not envy strike where envy please, 
But though withholden rancors burn and chafe 
He only stings where prudence says 'tis safe; 
Yet anxious most of all to make his own 
A courtier place beside the current throne. 
96 



The Pseudo-Wit 



Not one of these, but scores the town doth show ; 
In legions he runs smirking to and fro. 
And many a type I purpose still to sketch — 
If I am sharp, why acid's used to etch. 



A Scientific Note 

The transplanting of bones in the human body is 
entirely possible. — News Story. 

I FELL from out an airy-o-plane 
And hit a railway track, 
And lay there thinking while a train 
Ran up and down my back; 
It shattered me, it battered me, 
It made my hair turn gray, 
It somewhat widely scattered me 
Along the right of way ; 
It lifted me, it sifted me, 
It flung me here and there, 
It rather broadly drifted me; 
It raveled me, it graveled me, 
It sprayed me through the air — 
In short, the well-known firm of Krupp 
By shooting cannon at a pup 
Would scarcely more have used him up. 

The docs inspected parts of me, 
The docs collected parts of me, 
The docs rejected parts of me, 
And those selected parts of me 
They scratched 'em up and patched 'em up— 
98 



A Scientific Note 



(Except infected parts of me) — 

And went to work and matched 'em up. 

But bones of me and scruff of me 

And soft of me and tough of me 

They couldn't find enough of me, 

And so they took much-shredded me, 

Those surgeons, and they wedded me 

Unto the remnants of a zoo, 

And part of me is really me and part of me is 

kangaroo — 
Is elephants and cormorants and dodo birds and 

skinks, 
Is gulls and whales and dolphins' tails and jaguars 

and minks — 
And femurs 
Out of lemurs, 
And eyelids from a lynx — 
And bones and things and ribs and wings from 

simian sort of ginks. 

They welded 'em and melded 'em and wished 'em 

into me, 
They lopped at 'em and chopped at 'em and 

swished 'em into me, 
They toiled at them and boiled at them and dished 

'em into me — 

99 



A Scientific Note 



They fixed me up and mixed me up 
And joined me with a zoo, 
And part of me is really me — 
But some is kangaroo ! 

And now when I go down the street 

Strange instincts move my leaping feet 

Of kangaroo and cockatoo and bear and parra- 
keet, 

And now and then I utter cries in strange out- 
landish tones; 

Upon my soul, I can't control my yelps and 
jumps and moans, 

Because the surgeons bungled me, 

Because the surgeons jungled me, 

And left the fires of wild desires a-burning in 
my bones! 

For only part of me is me and part is some- 
thing else, 

For some of me is ostriches and some of me 
is smelts, 

And some of me is human hide and some of me 
is pelts! 

And sometimes it's embarrassing, 

Most awful so, and harassing, 

But mostly I endeavor not to take it very sad — 

The only thing that jolts me much, 
ioo 



A Scientific Note 



The only way I get in Dutch, 

The only time my spirits sag, 

Is when I feel compelled to wag 

A score or so of spectral tails I never really had. 



Frustration 



THE things that I can't have I want 
And what I have seems second-rate, 
The things I want to do I can't 
And what I have to do I hate, 
The things I want at once come late, 
I am not feeling gay nor gleg, 
I'm really in an awful state, 
My life is like a scrambled egg. 

If I should order elephant 

They'd put a camel on my plate, 
If I should seek a wealthy aunt 

A poor old uncle'd be my fate, 

If I should say, "You amputate 
My foot, and bring a wooden peg," 

They'd probably cut off my pate; 
My life is like a scrambled egg. 

The things I want most of are scant, 
The girls I really love won't mate, 

The times when rage would make me rant 
My larynx won't articulate; 
1 02 



Frustration 



Should I arrange some morn at eight 
To beat my brains out with my leg 

I'd probably forget the date; 
My life is like a scrambled egg. 

The simplest matters won't come straight, 
For once I wooed a maid named Meg 

And very nearly married Kate; 
My life is like a scrambled egg. 



Sad Thoughts 

I'VE never seen a pyramid 
A-standing on its head 
But what I've thought, "Some katydid 
Is underneath it, dead!" 

I've never seen a crocodile 

Go sliding down an Alp 
But that I've thought, "Cold lips may smile, 

But it will scar its scalp !" 

I've never seen a dinosaur 

A-hanging out the wash 
But that I've thought, "He'd rather, far, 

Be eating Hubbard squash!" 

I've never seen an oyster crawl 

Sad-eyed across a stew 
But that I've thought, "If love were all ! 

But no, death matters, too!" 

I've never seen a subway seat, 

Nor yet a subway strap 
Rut that I've thought, "If they had feet 

They'd curl them up and nap !" 
104 



Sad Thoughts 



I've never seen a porcupine 

Sink sadly down the west 
But that I've thought, " 'T would rather shine 

Upon some tender breast !" 

I've never seen a cantaloupe 

Moan underneath the moon 
But that I've thought, "Its early hope 

Was that 'twould be a prune !" 

I've never seen a sea gull cling 

About a bald man's dome 
But that I've thought, "Poor exiled thing — 

It wants its island home !" 




Reverie 



OF A GENTLEMAN OF SENSIBILITY AT AN ITALIAN 
TABLE D'HOTE 



T 



WAS in a basement tobble-dote 
I met a sad sardine ; 
It was the saddest thing, I trow, 
That I have ever seen, 
With eyes so wan and lusterless 
And frame so worn and lean. 
106 



' Reverie 
ii 

I gazed into its mournful eye, 

Its eye gazed back at me; 

I could not bear to eat a fish 

That looked so mournfully. 

"You, too, have suffered," I remarked, 

And sighed with sympathy. 

in 
I am a staid, reflective man, 
Of meditations grave; 
The barber tells me all his griefs 
When I go in to shave — 
I wondered what this fish's life 
Had been beneath the wave. 

iv 
Sometimes a very little thing 
Will make my tears to flow — 
"What was your life," I asked the fish, 
"In those damp depths below ?" 
He did not answer me ; words were 
Too weak to bear his woe. 

v 
I am not always understood : 
A dead bird on a hat 

107 



Reverie 

Moved me, one time, to weep upon 
My hostess' neck — for that, 
Although I only kissed her twice, 
They kicked me from their flat. 

VI 

They did not realize I crave 
Affection in my grief — 
My bleeding heart oft yearns for love 
As mustard yearns for beef — 
"Poor fish," I said, "you lie so mute 
Upon your lettuce leaf !" 

VII 

"If you could only speak, perhaps 
The words might ease your pain !" — 
He looked at me as dull as look 
The slag-heaps after rain 
When one goes into Pittsburg town 
Upon a railroad train. 

VIII 

"Perhaps from some great vessel's deck, 
In mournful years long syne, 
I've dropped into the moaning deep 
A tear that mixed with thine — 
What was your history before 
We twain met here to dine?" 
108 



- Reverie 

IX 

Not one sign did he give to me 
That showed he might have heard; 
He only held me with his gaze, 
He did not speak a word — 
Did he withhold his confidence, 
Or was it but deferred ? 



In either case, it made me mourn — 

Though I am used to it ; 

Too often people stand aloof 

From my more melting fit, 

Too oft they fling and pierce me with 

Their darts of cruel wit ! 

XI 

I do recall a dream I had 

In which I was full fed, 

And when I woke at dawn I found 

I'd eaten up my bed — 

O, gods ! the bitter, witty words 

That my landlady said ! 

XII 

I do not care to write them down ; 
After the lapse of years 
109 



Reverie 

They still have power to trouble me; 
They burn within my ears 
As the harsh oaths of the Bedouins burn 
Which the sad camel hears. 

XIII 

And what so sad as camels are 
When through the desert dawn 
A Pharaoh's mummy they descry 
Lying his bier upon 
With sand in his esophagus 
And his ambition gone? 

XIV 

In the Smithsonian Institute 

I knew a mummy mum 

Who stared forever at the roof 

All writhen and all glum, 

As if he had four thousand years 

Of colic in his turn; 

xv 
And I would stand as twilight fell 
Beside his carven tomb 
And strive to lighten with my songs 
His long dyspeptic doom, 
While skeletons of dinosaurs 
Drew nearer in the gloom. 

no 



Reverie 




XVI 

I never see a dinosaur 

So patient and so mute 

But that a song of pity springs 

Unbidden to my lute — 

He stayed a lizard, but he wished 

To be a bird, poor brute ! 



XVII 

I am so seldom understood ! 
Once, as my teardrops fell, 
in 



Reverie 

Upon a little lizard's head 
Hard by a sylvan well 
Coarse villagers came out in force 
And haled me to a cell. 

XVIII 

I've never seen a lizard crawl 

Along a rustic fence 

But that I've thought, "Poor helpless thing! 

Some child may pluck you hence, 

Thinking that you are edible — 

They have so little sense !" 

XIX 

O little sad sardine, I find 

This grief where'er I go ! 

And you have suffered likewise, for 

Your manner tells me so — ■ 

O little sad sardine, I fear 

Our world is full of woe ! 



/ Corinthians \ vii, 32, 33 



o 



Wife 

H, hark to me, my hubby — we need a 
ton of coal, oh ! 



Husband 

The subject's rather grubby — I'm thinking of my 
soul, oh! 

Wife 
I prithee, lamp the larder; its contents still are 

shrinking — 
Please work a little harder and can the Serious 

Thinking ! 

Husband 
Ere yet I knew the halter, I was so philosophic! 
You led me to the altar, and now my brain's 

atrophic ! 
On matters Feministic I argued like a winner, 
For Soulful things and Mystic I'd go without my 

dinner ! 
I knew about Vibrations as much as any Yogi — 
Your only thought is rations, your intellect is 

logy! 

113 



1 Corinthians vii, 32, 33 

Wife 
It's sad to make you weary demanding food and 

raiment — 
But psychic jobs, my dearie, are rather shy on 

payment ! 

Husband 
Your sole preoccupation is with such worldly 

matters ! 
For you the whole creation is grocers, clothiers, 

hatters ! 
Whenas I seek the Silence to meditate a sonnet 
You drag me out with Vi'lence and beg me for a 

bonnet, 
You have an awful habit of eating steak and 

shellfish, 
You see a meal and grab it — Oh, woman, you are 

selfish ! 

Wife 

I wish I had preempted a man with some am- 
bition ! 

Husband 
When to wed you're tempted, reflect — and go 
a-fishin' ! 



114 



Boob Ballad 



Underworld Gets His Money. — Headline. 

VICE parts the yokel from his wad, 
The wastrel from his soul — 
When Reuben went to Babylon 
They always got his roll. 

It's been the same since time began ; 

The careless person's feet 
Are sure to lead him into towns 

That aren't fit to eat. 

When Jason from the rowdy West 
Came back to buy in Greece 

They put some gum-drops in his booze 
And pinched the Golden Fleece. 

Crooks had a trick in Egypt's prime, 

When none sat on the lid, 
Of selling phony chances on 

King Khufu's pyramid. 

One boob may die, but deathless is 

The royal race of hicks — 
When Ahab went to Ascalon 

They sold him gilded bricks. 

115 



Boob Ballad 



When Solomon was king he tried 

To run a decent town, 
But Proverbs shows the System threw 

His good intentions down. 

The old Falernian that they poured 

On Circus Days in Rome 
Shook fillings from the neat-herd's teeth- 

And then they shipped him home. 

In spite of all you say or sing 

No boob will take the hint, 
But scatters all his wealth in dives 

That aren't fit to print. 

Giles still aspires to beat the game, 
Still thinks his failures odd — 

When Hezekiah went to Gath 
They always got his wad. 



Proverbs v, 5 

OBOOB ! heed Solomon ! 
Gazink, yon fair gazelle, 
Yon Stranger Woman, shun 
Her steps take hold on hell; 
Also, my Hick, to tell 
The truth of Astoreth, 

She costs a lot, and . . . well 
Her feet go down to death. 

From Fall Guys, one by one, 

She strips their Wampum Shell, 
Don't tango with her, son : 

Her steps take hold on hell. 

Simp, flee from her and yell 
Until you're out of breath! 

Rube, dodge her naughty spell ! 
Her feet go down to death. 

Giles, if she tags you, run ! 

Some pal of hers will quell 
You, Jared, with a gun ! 

Her steps take hold on hell. 
117 



Proverbs v, 5 

Silas, you think her swell? 
Beware ! (a proverb saith) 

Peleg, her clutch is fell ! 
Her feet go down to death. 

She isn't nice, old fel. ! 

Although she glittereth 
Her steps take hold on hell, 

Her feet go down to death. 



A Plan 



YOUTH is the season of revolt ; at twenty- 
five 
We curse the reigning politicians, 
Wondering that any man alive 
Stands for such damnable conditions. 
Whatever is, to us, is wrong, 
In economics, life, religion, art; 
The crowned old laureates of song 
Are pikers, and accepted sages 
Appear devoid of intellect and heart ; 
Continually the ego in us rages; 
Our sense of universal, rank injustice 
Swells till it's like to bust us; 
We love to see ourselves as outcast goats 
Browsing at basement tobbledotes, 
The while we forge the mordant bolt 
That is to give society its jolt; 
And any man who wears two eyes upon his face 
Contentedly and unashamed, 
And glories in the pose 

And makes a virtue of his having just one nose, 
We curse as dull, conventional and tamed 
And commonplace. 

119 



A Plan 

Thirty finds us a trifle sobered, with a doubt 

Whether we'll turn the cosmos inside out, 

Reform the earth, regild the moon 

And make the Pleiads sing a modern tune; 

Some of the classics are not bores, we think, 

And barbers have their uses ; 

We grow more choice in what we eat and drink, 

Less angry at abuses; 

We work a little harder, want more pay, 

Grab on to better jobs, 

And learn to make excuses 

For certain individuals erstwhile condemned as 
snobs ; 

We do not worry nine hours every day 

Because the world in its traditional, crool way 

Continues to roll calmly on and crush 

The worthier myriads into bloody mush; 

And yet, at thirty, on the whole, 

If analyzed we still would show a trace of soul. 

At forty — well, you know : 

Chins, bank accounts and stomachs start to 
grow; 

The world's still wrong in spite of all we've 
tried 

To do for it, and we're no longer broken- 
hearted — 

We sit on it and ride, 

We're willing, now, to let the darned thing slide 
120 



* A Plan 

Along in just about the way it started. 

Of course, we're anxious for reforms, 

And all that sort of stuff, 

Unless they cause too many economic storms — 

But really, on the whole, it's well enough: 

We hold by standards, rules and norms. 

But when I'm eighty I intend 

To turn a fool again for twenty years or so; 

Go back to being twenty-five, 

Drop caution and conventions, join some little 

group 
Fantastically rebel and alive, 
And revolute, from soup 
To nuts ; I'll reimburse myself 
For all the freak stuff that I've had to keep 

upon the shelf ; 
Indulge my crotchets, be the friend of man, 
And pull the thoughts I've always had to can — ■ 
I'm looking forward to a rough, rebellious, un- 

respectable old age, 
Kicking the world uphill 
With laughter shrill 
And squeals of high-pitched, throaty rage. 




v«*«j 



Speaking of Debacles 

WHAT'S become of Nimrod, of, 
Nimrod, of Nimrod? 
He was a great commander! 
But now he is so very dead, very dead, very 

dead, 
That if you scratched his blooming head 
You couldn't raise the dander! the dander! the 

dander ! 
You couldn't raise the dander ! 



What became of Nineveh? 
In the flames it crackled! 
122 



Speaking of Debacles 

And I've heard that Babylon 
Is also some debacled! 

What became of Philip, of Philip, of Philip, 

The Macedonian smasher? 

He tried to bring the bacon home, the bacon 

home, the bacon home, 
But now there's fungus in his dome, 
He isn't worth a rasher ! a rasher ! a rasher ! 
He isn't worth a rasher! 

Take it from your little friend, 
The gink that wills to conquer 
Seldom makes it permanent — •. 
Hey, my giddy junker? 

What's become of Khufu, of Khufu, of Khufu? 

He swelled up like the rickets ! 

But now in his sarcophagus, cophagus, cophagus, 

With sand in his esophagus, 

He lies with fleas and crickets ! and crickets ! and 

crickets ! 
He lies with fleas and crickets ! 

Take it from your gentle friend, 
The kink that's too extensive, 
Debacles with an awful thud 
And finds the game expensive! 

123 



Speaking of Debacles 

What became of Caesar, of Caesar, of Caesar, 

Of him and all his Latin? 

Brutus pinked him through the chine, through 

the chine, through the chine, 
And rolled him down the Palatine, 
And Cassius kicked a slat in ! a slat in ! a slat in ! 
And Cassius kicked a slat in! 

Take it out of History: 

Don't be an imperator! 

You'll maybe set a pace that's hot, 

But Fate will make you hotter! 

What's become of Wilhelm, of Wilhelm, of 
Wilhelm, 

His battles and his pow-wows? 

He also has debacled some, debacled some, de- 
bacled some, 

At present, he is on the bum 

And soon he'll meet the bow-wows ! the bow- 
wows ! the bow-wows ! 

And soon he'll meet the bow-wows! 

/ hope he lives a thousand years, 
With un-imperial duties, 
I hope he lives a thousand years 
And spends 'em picking cooties! 



1 24 



The Good Old Days 

Y 



"""^ "^"OU are, quite frequently, too high- 
brow," 
Advised one of our Candid Friends. 
We twitched a supercilious eyebrow 
And murmured, "That depends." 



"Sometimes," he said, "I cannot get you . . . 

I'm merely being frank, old man." 
"Don't grieve," said we, "or let that fret you- 

We're worried when you can." 

However, he induced reflection . . . 

If we are highbrow, we are so 
Through affectation and selection — 

Our natural tastes are Low. 

Ah, how we'd love to earn our wages 
By franker jests and less refined! 

The license of primeval ages 
Would suit our childish mind. 

We mourn the free old days and merry 
When cave-men jesters scored their hits 

With stone clubs on their rivals hairy . . . 
The give and take of wits . . . 

125 



The Good Old Days 



Men laughed until they had a spasm 
While crippling uncles old and frail, 

Or dangling down some frightful chasm 
A grand-dad by his tail. 

They loved a baldhead ; they'd tattoo him ; 

They loved to give a friend a squint, 
Or stalk a stranger and undo him 

With axes made of flint. 

Ah, how the hills would ring with laughter 
Should some enfeebled reverend sire, 

Dreaming, his ample dinner after, 
But fall into the fire ! 

Alas! the good old days have vanished; 

The fun to-day is thin and weak, 
The hearty, simple jest is banished . . . 

Our thoughts we dare not speak. . . . 

And so we raise superior eyebrows, 
And scorn the lovely slapstick stuff; 

And so we pander to the highbrows — 
We hate it, but we bluff. 



The Universe and the 
Philosopher 

THE Universe and the Philosopher sat and 
looked at each other satirically. . . . 
"You know so many things about me 
that aren't true!" said the Universe to the 
Philosopher. 
"There are so many things about you that you 
seem to be unconscious of," said the Phi- 
losopher to the Universe. 

* * * 

"I contain a number of things that I am trying 
to forget," said the Universe. 

"Such as what?" asked the Philosopher. 

"Such as Philosophers," said the Universe. 

"You are wrong," said the Philosopher to the 
Universe, "for it is only by working up the 
most important part of yourself into the 
form of Philosophers that you get a 
product capable of understanding you at 
all." 

"Suppose," said the Universe, "that I don't care 
127 



Universe and Philosopher 

about being understood. Suppose that I 
care more about being?" 
"You are wrong again, then," said the Phi- 
losopher. "For being that is not conscious 
being can scarcely be called being at all." 



"You Philosophers always were able to get the 
better of me in argument," smiled the Uni- 
verse, "and I think that is one thing that 
is the matter with you." 

"If you object to our intellects," said the Phi- 
losopher, "we can only reply that we got 
them, as well as everything else, from 
you." 

"That should make you more humble," said the 
Universe. "If I quit letting you have in- 
tellect, where would you be then?" 

"Where would you be," asked the Philosopher, 
"if you quit letting me have intellect? If I 
quit thinking you out as you are, and must 
be, you would cease to exist as you are; 
for I am a part of you; and if I were to 
change, your total effect would be changed 
also." . . . Then the Philosopher reflected 
a long moment, and, warming to his work, 
put over this one : "The greater part of you, 
for all I know, exists in my brain anyhow ; 
128 



Universe and Philosopher 

and if I should cease to think of that part, 

that part would cease to be." 
* * * 

"You make me feel so helpless, somehow !" com- 
plained the Universe, hypocritically. "I beg 
your pardon for asking you to be humble a 
moment ago. ... I see now, very plainly, 
that it is I who should be more humble in 
your presence." 

"I am glad," said the Philosopher, "that we have 
been able to arrive at something like an un- 
derstanding." 

"Understanding !" echoed the Universe. "It's so 
important, isn't it?" . . . And then : "Come ! 
We have argued enough for one day ! There 
is something terribly fatiguing to me about 
Profound Thought. Can't we just lie down 
in the shade the rest of the afternoon and 
watch the wheels go round?" 

"Watch the wheels go round?" puzzled the Phi- 
losopher. 

"Uh-huh ! . . . the planets and solar systems, 
and stuff like that. The nicest thing in life, 
as I have lived it, is just to lie about and 
drowse and watch the wheels go round. . . . 
I made nearly everything spherical in the be- 
ginning so it would roll when I kicked it. 
I'd rather play than think." 
129 



Universe and Philosopher 

"You are a Low Brow!" said the Philosopher. 

"Uh-huh," said the Universe. "At times. ... I 
suppose that's the reason some of the chil- 
dren neglect the old parent these days." 

* * * 

And then, after a nap, during which the Philoso- 
pher contemplated the Universe with a tinge 
of superiority, the Universe rumbled sleep- 
ily: "I know what I am going to do with 
this Intellect Stuff. I'm going to take it 
away from you Philosophers and give it to 
fish or trees or something of that sort !" 

"How frightfully grotesque!" said the Philoso- 
pher, turning pale. 

"Or to giraffes," continued the Universe. "Gi- 
raffes are naturally dignified. And they 
aren't meddlesome. I'd like to see a whole 
thousand of giraffes walking along in a row, 
with their heads in the air, thinking, think- 
ing, thinking . . . with tail coats and horn- 
rimmed goggles." 

* * * 

"You are absurd !" cried the Philosopher. 

"Uh-huh," said the Universe. And reaching 
over, the Universe picked up the Philoso- 
pher, not ungently, by the scruff of the neck, 
tossed him into the air, caught him tenderly 
130 



Universe and Philosopher 

as he came down, spun him around, and set 
him right side up on the ground. 
'You," said the Universe, grinning at the breath- 
less Philosopher pleasantly, "are sort of 
funny yourself, sometimes !" 




Taking the Longer View 

"OW easy for our Human Race 

To hit the quick chute to Avernus ! 
How surely the febrific pace 
Will blister us somewhere and burn us ! 

How dentally beside the gate, 

O dainty gents and toothsome ladies ! 

Astoundingly tri-cephalate, 

Waits Cerberus, the mutt of Hades! 

As sure as eggs are eggs . . . and eggs 
Should all be eggs at current prices . . . 

Mankind is at the poisoned dregs, 

Mad are its virtues, mad its vices . . . 

At least, some say so, citing you 

The latest Bolshevistic kick-ups . . . 

A writhen cosmos torn in two 

With colics, snorts and seismic hiccoughs . . . 

And Debt, Demnition, Strikes, Unrest, 
Amongst white races, blacks, gamboges, 

Anarchs (and archies) East and West, 
And Law and Order dead as Doges ; 
132 



Taking the Longer View 

Till one could almost breathe the wish 
He were remote as Cheops' mummy, 

With sad face like a salted fish 
And silicon inside his tummy. 

I wipe my eye upon my sleeve, 

I brush my nose with my bandanna, 

I choke and think I'll have to leave 
This boob world flat and seek Nirvana ; 

But after tears have well achieved 

Their kindly office of purgation 
My gloomy spirit feels relieved 

And settles down to save the nation ; 

The drab hunch shows a pinker hue — 

The dark Vamp thought turns Blond-Com- 
plected — 

And I remark : "I always knew 
This stuff was but to be expected ! 

"This species only yesterday 

Was gouging eyes out, hunting witches, 
Jeering Elijahs on their way 

And boiling martyrs in their britches ; 

"How often when they find a sage 

As sweet as Socrates or Plato 
They hand him hemlock for his wage, 

Or bake him like a sweet potato ! 

133 



Taking the Longer View 

"Wait for five million years or so 

And Man may slough his ancient habit, 

Become as sober as the Crow, 

Perchance, and gentle as the Rabbit." 

I pin my faith (as you remark) 

To Evolution . . . who can doubt it? . 

Hermione has said it — hark: 

"What would the Species be without it !" 

So let's have patience and abide, 

Be calm and gamble in these futures, 

For time will show more sense inside 
The human occiput and sutures; 

A million years I'd sit right here 

And watch and help with meditation — 

Provided they'd not take my beer, 
Nor vote my pipe abomination. 

For when one's waiting, it seems best, 
Whether the end's remote or sooner, 

To puff the blue smoke East and West 
And lift, from time to time, a schooner. 



Grief 



ALL glum and gray day follows day ; 
Friday, Saturday, Sunday . . . 
I long ago forbore to seek 
For variations in the week . . . 
Each Tuesday tags its Monday ! - 

Perched here, atop gloom's precipice, 

With neither wings nor ladder, 
I meditate such grief as this, 

And hourly I grow sadder. 

Consider feet: their rhythmic beat 

Is due to alternation ; 
Left, right; left, right, all over town, 
When one goes up its mate comes down 

In sad reiteration. 

These facts of feet I long have known, 

But still their pathos lingers; 
I moan; I utter moan on moan, 

And count them on my fingers. 

Come thou with me, and thou shalt see, 
While breaking hearts beat louder, 

135 



Grief 

How laden spoons can rise and float 

From sad tureen to throbbing throat 

Where men sit eating chowder. 

/ doubt it, yet . . . things might be worse! 

Suppose my cerebellum 
Had thoughts in it, instead of verse, 

Or prunes, or slippery ellum! 

Suppose . . . suppose ... of all my woes 
The worst come through supposin' ! 

Suppose yon polar glacier slid 

And fell upon some katydid 
And left his tootsies frozen! 

Let brutal natures smirk and wheeze 

And cynic souls wax scornful, 
I meditate on things like these 

And daily grow more mournful. 



Ves, Song is Coming Into 
Its Own Again 

IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT, READ THE REVIEWS AND 

ANTHOLOGIES, AND EVEN ASK THE 

POETS THEMSELVES 

THERE'S a grand poetical "boom," they 
say. 
(Climb on it, chime on it, brothers of 
mine!) 
'Twixt the dawn and the dusk of each lyrical day 
There's another School started, and all of 'em 
pay. 

(A dollar a line! 
Think of it, Ferdy, a dollar a line!) 

I hear it's a regular Rennysong ! 

(Chestily, yestily, brothers of mine.) 
If you have a soul, Clarence, you surely belong, 
For the Spirit is going uncommonly strong. 

(A dollar a line, 

The Uplifting stuff brings a dollar a line!) 

Was you ever a murderer, Pete, in your youth? 
(Brutally, shootily, brothers of mine!) 

137 



Coming Into Its Own Again 

Give 'em the song how you done for that Sleuth — 
You cuss and be Human, and tell 'em Gawd's 
trewth ! 

(A dollar a line, 
Booze, Beauty and Blood for a dollar a line.) 

Perhaps you're a shark with the "nuances," kid? 

{Go lightly, go sleightly, brothers of mine!) 
Tones, colors, gradations, and Didn'ts that Did, 
And Wasn'ts that Would-have-been if they had 
slid? 

(A dollar a line, 
The vaguer the better, a dollar a line!) 

Or perchance you aspire to the "free" verse and 
"new" ? 
(Sloppily, choppily, brothers of mine.) 
Write commonplace stanzas, but when you get 

through 
Go mad with the weather and bite 'em in two. 

(A dollar a line! 
Sell what you don't eat for a dollar a line!) 

But whatever you write, be sure you're Sincere. 

(Carefully, prayerfully, brothers of mine!) 
If you're chanting of Penitence, Passion or Beer, 
It's that deep Earnest note that catches the ear. 

(A dollar a line, 
You oughta be Mor'l for a dollar a line.) 
138 



Coming Into Its Own Again 

Be serious, Fothergil! Lecture and read. 

{Attitudes ! Platitudes! brothers of mine.) 
Charge a hundred iron men to be It at a Feed 
Where you solemnly tell what these Sordid Times 
need. 

(A dollar a line! 
And grab the by-products ! A dollar a line!) 

Does Fame lag a bit? Is the Public a Dub? 

(Then cannily, plannily, brothers of mine!) 
Join a mutual, root-f or-all Verse-Boosting Club — 
They'll soon woo the butterfly out of the grub! 

(A dollar a line! 

Press-agent each other! A dollar a line!) 

Ah, the great day of Song is revived — is reborn ! 

(Blink at me — wink at me — brothers of mine.) 
Yes, the Era's arrived ! It got here this morn. 
But the Car that it came in is hid by the Horn ! 

(A dollar a line, 

Toot! toot! we're immortal! A dollar a line!) 



The Genius of the Vague 

SHE came at twilight yestere'en, 
With eyes profound and sad, 
And murmured, "You must choose be- 
tween 
The Shadow and the Shad !" 

"What mean you, cryptic visitor, 

Who come to me uncalled?" 
She answered, "Ned and Isidor 

And Thomas, too, are bald !" 

"I know they are," I said, "but why 

Should that so sadden you?" 
She wiped a wan and wistful eye 

And smelled a sprig of rue. 

"Oh, sounds," she said, "oh, sounds and scents! 

And, oh ! forgotten years !" — 
Beneath her shrouding filaments 

She shed, I think, some tears. 

"But what are you," I asked of her, 

"Who waver through the gloom 
As cheerful as a sepulcher, 

As genial as a tomb?" 
140 



The Genius of the Vague 

"I am," she said, "the friend of Potes ; 

And sometimes I'm the plague 
Who gets their gay, Parnassian goats : 

The Genius of the Vague ! 

"Vers libre, or straight old-fashioned rime, 

Ode, sonnet, song, ballade, 
I've saved from failure many a time 

With nonsense quaint and odd ; 

"When feeling fails, or thought or trope, 

When meaning peaks and pines, 
Do not, therefore, abandon hope, 

But pull some mystic lines — 

"Oh, seas and shores," she said, "and dreams, 

Echo and Af terwhile ! 
And souls and sorrows, gulls and gleams !" — 

She smiled a pensive smile — 

"Oh, you must choose between," she said, 

"The Filbert and the Fly !"— 
I looked, and she had vanished; 

She left behind a Sigh. 



Vorticism 



A 



CUBIST and a Futurist were walking 
out one day 
And came upon an Imagist engaged in 
frying hay ; — 



"You think it's grass ?" said he. "Ah, that's the 

way with Art ! 
Sometimes it's made of leather, but it's always 

Apple Tart! 

"Centripetal emotion, delicately swirled, 
Spins nothing round on nothing, like an axis and 
a world !" 

"So that's your little secret?" the Futurist re- 
plied, 

But the Cubist only murmured, and the Cubist 
only sighed, 

A-counting of his fingers, the Cubist only sighed. 

"Subliminal abstractions," the Imagist explained, 
"Are apt to run around in rings — unless they're 
trained ! 

"A psychopathic maelstrom may hurt your cere- 
brum, 
But remember in the middle there's but a vacuum ! 
142 



Vorticism 

"When esoteric cyclones whirl along your brain 
There's nothing at the vortex except a sense of 
pain! 

"So that's your little secret?" the Futurist re- 
marked 

But the Cubist only squiffled, and the Cubist only 
barked, 

A-chasing of his shadow, the Cubist only barked. 

Said the Imagist, "When tempests go whirling 

round and round 
There's nothing in the teapot excepting Ezra 

Pound. 

"The less there is of nothing, the more it gains 

in speed, 
And starting on that basis, I've founded me a 

creed ; — 

"I call it Vorticism, but the name is just a pin 
To serve it for an axis when the words begin 
to spin." 

"So that's your little secret? — I call it rather 

neat!" 
But the Cubist only muttered, a-wondering at his 

feet, 
A-sitting by the haystack, a-counting of his feet. 

143 



Ballade of Goddamned 
Phrases 

"... I wrote cables of which I may at least say they 
are descriptive as far as official phraseology will per- 
mit, and they are turned by some miserable people 
somewhere into horrible bureaucratic cliches or dead 
languages, i.e., 'We have made an appreciable advance,' 
'The situation remains unchanged,' and similar god- 
damned phrases." — Gen. Ian Hamilton. 

WHAT a high official has told 
I am not permitted to state, 
His name I am forced to with- 
hold, 
But his views have a certain weight, 
And I think, at no distant date, 
We may look for some novel phases, 

For he spoke of "Ironical Fate" 
And similar goddamned phrases. 

What glitters may not be gold, 

So caution's a canny trait — 
As Solomon said of old. 

Prophecy, sad to relate, 

May even betray the great, 
So my friend remarks, "No praises 

Till the facts eventuate!" 
And similar goddamned phrases. 
144 



Goddamned Phrases 



But at least I may make so bold 
As to hint that I have it straight 

That developments may unfold 
At an unprecedented rate, 
And my friend, I may intimate, 

Has a grasp of the thing that amazes, 
For he says, "It is on the slate!" 

And similar goddamned phrases. 

ENVOY 

General, let us not hate! 

For we're most of us guilty as blazes 
With cliche you are stiff as a gate, — 

And similar goddamned phrases. 



The Battle of the Blurbs 

THE Blurb on the Poems of Dana Burnet * 
Was a golden Blurb, and fine — 
And I wanted the Blurb on the Burnet 
book, 
And he wanted the Blurb on mine ! f 

"I will get that Blurb of yourn," says he, 

"In spite of fire and flood!" 
And he laughed in his brutal, brackish way 

As he swigged a dipper of blood. 

I spat on the floor, and I drummed on my teeth 
With the knob of a bull's thigh bone, 

And I swore by the red-hot crown that hangs 
By the side of Hell's high throne, — 

I swore, "I will have that Blurb of yourn 
Though I wade waist-deep in gore !" 

And he in turn bared his bitter teeth 
And spat upon the floor. 

* Poems. By Dana Burnet. Harper and Brothers. 
t Dreams and Dust. By Don Marquis. Harper and 
Brothers. 

146 



The Battle of the Blurbs 

The thunders cowered all mute with dread 
And the frightened seas were whist 

As each one swung on a mammoth's skull 
And crushed it with his fist. 

"We are pote to pote and ship to ship," 

Says I, "and steel to steel !" 
"We are," says he, "and I'll grind your heart 

Beneath my hobnailed heel !" 

O dread it is when the crocodiles 

Roar murder through the night, 
But it's dreader far when the bullnecked bards 

Go bellowing forth to fight ! 

O dread it is when the long-horn whales 
Rage through the reddened deep, 

But when bards war not even the gods 
Can get their proper sleep ! 

The ramparts flickered with running flame 
And the blood steamed underneath 

As muzzle to muzzle the two ships swung 
And fought with claws and teeth. 

The yellow moon turned white with fear, 

The sun forgot to set, 
As out of the rocky gorge there rolled 

A river of blood and sweat. 

147 



The Battle of the Blurbs 

And his claymore severed my jugular, 

And mine cut through his heart, 
And I think that both of us felt chagrined 

As, dying, we fell apart. 

And he said with a groan as his spirit passed 
Through the rent my wrath had made, 

"You wanted my Blurb, I wanted yourn — 
Why didn't we think to trade?" 

"That's so," I said, as I weltered and died 

Upon the office floor, 
"We might have swapped 'em — I wish that 
scheme 

Had occurred to us before !" 

For a monument, over the place we fell, 

The Blurbs rise, side by side, 
And the publishers maunder above our tombs 

And wonder why we died. 




The Joke smith's Vacation 

WHAT did I do on my blooming vaca- 
tion? 
I solemnly ate, and I frequently 
slept ; 
But I chiefly live over in fond contemplation 
The days that I wept. For I wept and I wept. 



One making his living by humorous sallies 

Finds the right to be mournful a blessed re- 
lief— 
And hour after hour in the byways and alleys 
I sobbed out my soul in a passion of grief. 
149 



The J r ok e smith! 's Vacation 

I'm really not humorous. (Cue to be scornful, 
Dear reader, and murmur, "We know that you 
ain't!") 
And gee ! what a treat to be human and mourn- 
ful, 
As glum as a gumboil, as sad as a saint ! 

Any one can weep tears when he suffers abrasion 
Of feelings or fingers or bunions or breeks, 

But it hustles you some to find proper occasion 
When you have a year's weeping to do in two 
weeks ! 

Counting one evening my toes and my fingers 
I found them unchanged with the passing of 
years, 
And I muttered, "How sad that the same number 
lingers !" 
And crept to my cot in a tempest of tears. 

When I noted at morn that the sun was still 
rising 

To the eastward of things instead of the west 
Its pathos so smote me 'tis scarcely surprising 

I tore at my tresses and beat on my breast. 

I went to Niagara. Leaping and throbbing 
The waterfall fell, as per many an ad. 

But over its roar rose the sound of my sobbing — 
The water was moister, but I was more sad! 

ISO 



The Jokesmittis Vacation 

What did I do on my blooming vacation ? 

Quite often I ate and I frequently slept, 
But mostly I sobbed — I think with elation 

How I wept and I wept and I wept and I wept ! 



Suggestions for a Movie 
Fillum 

A SHIP comes galloping over the sea 
(Boots, brutes and a keg of powder!) 
And none but Our Hero is riding she ! 
(Blood, mud and the Barbary Coast!) 
He is spurring her hard, he is riding her fast 
And her bloody flanks are raw to the blast 
From her martingale to her mizzen mast. 
(Rum, gum and a parlor snake!) 

From a sunset ocean crimson and green 
(Knives, chives and a bucket of beer!) 

Rises a raging submarine; 

(Gawd, Claude, there's trouble ahead!) 

And a German spy at the periscope 

Is spraying the ocean with poison dope ; 

Our Hero loosens his lariat rope . . . 
(Huns, guns and a platter of tripe!) 

A glance to the East, a glance to the West, 

(Heave, Steve, and port your helium!) 
And Our Heroine, very expensively dressed 

(Yes, Tess, I'll say you're a pippin!) 
In an airyoplane falls from above 
And Our Hero sees her and falls in love . . 5 
She sinks and moans like a wounded dove. 
(Steady, Eddie, and bean that walrus!) 
152 



Suggestions for a Movie Fillum 

With his great shark teeth all yellow and bare 

{Swim, Jim, for the cops are coming!) 
The submarine leaps for to gnash her there! 

{Quick, Dick, the ice is breaking!) 
His mor'ls are so bad they couldn't be worse 
And he fetches a gnash and he fetches a curse, 
For he thinks that she is a Red Cross nurse ! 
(Roister, oyster! you have no cares!) 

Our Hero has known the best and the worst 
(Bones, groans, and the Spanish Main!) 

He has been extensively Red-Cross-Nursed 
(Back, Jack! Unhand her, villain!) 

And his manly heart swells in his breast; 

But his noble ship has galloped her best 

And she stumbles and sinks, she is sore dis- 
tressed ! 
(Hush, Tush! and a sob from the 'cello!) 

He leaps from his saddle without demur 
(Hike, Ike, or they'll get your number!) 

And he strips from his boot the gilded spur 
(Swipes! Cripes! but I'm getting thirsty!) 

With his good sword held in his chiseled lips ! 

Through a sea that is death to him that trips, 

He swims with the speed of a hundred ships — 
(Hop, Pop! Here with the seltzer!) 

*53 



Suggestions for a Movie Fillum 

The struggle churns the seas to yeast, 

{Shake, quake, for the world is splitting!) 
But at last he has roped and tied the beast 

(Rest, breast! and cease your panting!) 
And he mounts the Hun and he gallops again 
Through the midst of a trivial hurricane 
With Our Heroine perched on his bridle rein — 
(Hell's bells! what a slothful bar-keep!) 



Ballad of the Author of 
Dora Thome 

In the choice of these (names) the real Clay (Char- 
lotte M. Braeme) never erred. Not for her the cheap 
Montmorencys of cheaper fiction, but — for example — 
Randolph Lord Ryvvers of Ryvverswell, Hubert Forest- 
Hay, Lord Earle of Earlescourt, Lionel Dacre, etc., etc. 
— Edna Kenton in The Trend. 

ELODIE LYNTON shall never more mark 
Lord Ronald Caerleon career o'er the 
plain ; 
The casements of Walraven Abbey are dark — 
And where is the Bride of Sir Devereux Dane? 
Duchess of Rosedene, hauteur was in vain! 
Time has cried crooly, "Out into the Night!" 
All the scarlet verbenas "turn pallid with 
pain !" 
You "passed like a beautiful bird in its flight!" 

Vyvyan Dacre, I swear to you — hark! — 

You never shall marry Diana Dumaine! 
She and Guinevere Earle, with her "song of a 
lark" 
Are "golden buds lying where Fate reaped the 
grain" — 

155 



Ballad of the Author 



The "creme de la creme" (I regret it) are 
slain — 
Time has cried crooly, "Out into the Night!" 
With "deep, bitter sobs" I swoon in "Life's 
fane" ! 
You "passed like a beautiful bird in its flight!" 

Sir Basil Inverry of Inverry Park, 

Lady Glenarvon and Ryvverswell Frayne, 

Miniver Danefield, Lord Lancelot Arc, 
Valentine Charteris, Cyril Lorrayne, 
Rosalind Fernley of Rosemary Lane, 

Time has cried crooly, "Out into the Night!" 
You shall "darken our doors," ah, never 
again ! 

You "passed like a beautiful bird in its flight." 

Lady Craigcastle and Lord Athelstane, 

Time has cried crooly, "Out into the Night!" 
Boggses and Jugginses now are our bane — 
You "passed like a beautiful bird in its flight." 



Strong Stuff 

THE Editors sit in a circle, 
Planning their magazine; 
Burly and beetle-browed, 
With dirks at their brawny thighs; 
And each, as he dips a skull 
Deep in a tub of blood, 
And drinks with a toss of his battered head, 
Bellows the toast: 

"Strong Stuff!" 
Hirelings that cower and cringe 
Bear to them platters 
Heaped high with the bones of bulls — 
Thigh of mastodon, 
Shoulder of mammoth and rib of the Asian 

elephant — 
And they growl and crack the bones with their 

teeth, 
And they roar till the rafters ring, 
Bellowing all together: 

"Strong Stuff!" 

A poet who sits in the ante-room 

With a song of a violet hugged to his heart 

157 



Strong Stuff 



Hears, and the sweat of dread 
Bursts through his pallid skin, 
And the ink of his poem starts 
And runs in a purple tear — 
And he hears, as he hits the stairway, 
Bound for the friendly street, 
The voices of Editors howling: 
"Strong Stuff!" 

The Editors sit in a circle, 
Hairy of throat and chest, 
With cauliflower ears and red-rimmed eyes, 
And they gnash their teeth till the sparks 
Fly out of their mouths and noses; 
And one of the youngest rises 
And leaps in the air 

And bites himself on his own iron brow — 
Jumps up and sinks his teeth 
Deep in his sinister forehead — 
And the others, applauding, 
Bang on the table with bones of bulls, 
And shout in their gusty mirth: 
"Strong Stuff!" 



(i) 



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THE GREEN BOUGH 

By E. Temple Thurston 
Author of "The City of Beautiful Nonsense," etc. 

A powerful story of a great passion and of a woman who was not afraid of 
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Kidnapped while visiting India, an American girl is the prize for which 
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THE SAMOVAR GIRL 

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"Most piquant little love story of any recent writing." — New York 
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T701 " 



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